E.L.D. Cornerstone.  Life in words & pictures

October 5, 2015

US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said Monday that Russia is pursuing a "losing strategy" in Syria and that it must live up to its commitments in Ukraine.

Speaking in Madrid at the start of a five-day trip to Europe, Carter told Spanish military officials that by carrying out bombing in Syria, Russia had only worsened the 4.5-year-old conflict.

Russia last week started air strikes in Syria. Moscow claimed it was hitting Islamic State jihadists, but the Pentagon says Russian jets are targeting rebel groups in order to support the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

"Russia has escalated the civil war, putting further at risk the very political resolution and preservation of Syria's structure of future governance it says that it wants," Carter said at the Center for Strategic Studies and Defence.

"It remains my hope that Vladimir Putin will see that tethering Russia to a sinking ship is a losing strategy, and will decide to confront the threat presented by (IS) instead of continuing its unilateral airstrikes against Assad's opposition."

Carter's trip is aimed at acknowledging allies in the 60-plus member US-led coalition that is carrying out daily drone and plane strikes against IS jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

Europe is struggling to deal with the refugee crisis sparked by the Syrian conflict, which has uprooted millions of people.

Carter also is attending a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, where several items including Russia's stance in eastern Ukraine will be discussed.

"We will continue to make it clear that if Russia wants to end its international isolation and be considered a responsible global power, it must stop its aggression in eastern Ukraine, end its occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea, and live up to its commitments under the Minsk agreements," Carter said.

"We will take all necessary steps to deter Russia's malign and destabilizing influence, coercion, and aggression, including its efforts to undermine strategic stability and challenge the military balance in Europe."

October 5, 2015

Turkey's prime minister vowed Monday to take all necessary measures to protect the nation's borders from violation after a Russian fighter jet entered its airspace over the weekend, prompting Turkey to scramble jets and summon the Russian ambassador in protest.

NATO said another Russian jet intruded into Turkey's airspace Sunday, and it called urgent consultations on the issue. The alliance strongly protested the Russian violations and noted "the extreme danger of such irresponsible behavior."

Russia admitted to the first incursion Saturday, but said it intruded "by mistake" and assured Ankara it wouldn't happen again, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a televised interview. However, a senior U.S. official said the Obama administration doesn't believe the Russian incursion was an accident, and officials are in urgent talks with allies about what to do. Neither country spoke about the second incident.

The U.S. official wasn't authorized to publicly discuss sensitive military matters and spoke on condition of anonymity. In Madrid, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday that Washington is conferring with Turkish leaders about the infringement.

The incident comes amid Turkish concerns over Russian airstrikes in Syria that have targeted some foreign-backed insurgents. Turkey and Russia also have conflicting positions on the Syrian government, with Russia backing President Bashar Assad and Turkey insisting on his ouster.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said during an interview with Haber Turk television that NATO-member Turkey would enforce its rules of engagement if its airspace is violated. Those rules call for the treatment of any element approaching the Turkish border from Syria as an enemy.

"The Turkish armed forces have their orders," he said. "The necessary will be done even if it's a bird that violates Turkey's border ... Our rules of engagement are clear."

A Foreign Ministry statement said Monday that a Russian warplane entered Turkey's airspace near the town of Yayladagi, in Hatay province on Saturday. Two F-16 jets intercepted the Russian aircraft and forced it to fly back into the Syrian airspace.

Also Monday, Turkey's military said a MIG-29 jet had harassed two Turkish F-16s for five minutes and 40 seconds on Sunday by locking its radar onto them. In a brief statement, the military said the incident occurred while 10 F-16s were patrolling the Turkish-Syrian border. The military said it didn't know which country the MIG-29 belonged to.

Turkey summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded that Russia avoid future infringements, the Foreign Ministry statement said. It warned that Russia would be held "responsible for any undesired incident," that may occur. The same message was also relayed to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov by telephone.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg expressed solidarity with Turkey and said the situation would be taken up at a meeting later on Monday. Davutoglu was also scheduled to chair a security meeting in Ankara in the evening.

"I call on Russia to fully respect NATO airspace and to avoid escalating tensions with the Alliance," Stoltenberg said.

"I urge Russia to take the necessary steps to align its efforts with those of the international community in the fight against ISIL," he added, using an alternative acronym of the Islamic State group.

Davutoglu told Haber Turk television that Russia assured Turkey that the airspace would not be violated again.

"The information we got from Russia this morning is that it was an incident that occurred by mistake," he said. "They said they are respectful of Turkey's borders and that it would not happen again."

Last week, Turkey issued a joint statement with its allies involved in the U.S.-backed campaign against the Islamic State group asking Moscow to cease attacks on the Syrian opposition and to focus on fighting the IS.

On Sunday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Russian airstrikes were unacceptable and a grave mistake that could alienate Moscow in the region.

Russia says the airstrikes that began Wednesday are targeting the Islamic State group and al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, but at least some of the strikes appear to have hit Western-backed rebel factions.

July 11, 2015

When American-trained Tajik special forces commander Col. Gumurod Khalimov defected to the Islamic State a few weeks ago, he issued a clarion call for hundreds of thousands of his countrymen working as migrant laborers in Russia to follow him.

“Stop serving the infidels,” he said in a video that appeared online, prompting the Tajik government to block access to Facebook, YouTube and other social networks for several days.

But local migrants and religious advocates say that if the Islamic State is recruiting from Tajikistan, it is driven more by economics than ideology.

Since the start of the year, a new Russian migration law has required foreign workers from countries outside the Eurasian Economic Union customs bloc to pass Russian language and history tests, acquire expensive permits and pay steep monthly fees to keep the jobs they have been doing for years. The law has had a particularly severe effect on Tajikistan, where remittances account for almost half the national income. The World Bank expects them to drop by 23 percent this year.

Meanwhile, Islamic State recruiters are at the ready, offering large sums of cash to desperate, unemployed workers to go fight in Syria. And many — given the lack of options in the poorest of the former Soviet republics — are answering the call.

“If our citizens who are without work, who are young, who don’t have a salary, who don’t have a life, are offered a golden city and told ‘you can earn more money, you can improve your conditions’ — naturally he would feel that he would be much better off going to fight in Syria,” Mavjuda Azizova, of the International Organization for Migration's Tajikistan office, said in an interview recently. “More than 400 of our citizens are in Syria, officially, and it could be even more. Those are just the ones we know by name.”

Dilshod Saliev, 22, returned from Moscow to Sarband in southwestern Tajikistan about three months ago, after he was forced to leave his job at a furniture factory . He says that if Islamic recruiters came to him offering cash to join their ranks, he wouldn’t take the money. But he knows someone who did, just a month ago — and understands why others would.

“Of course there is a threat of extremism — many people in this situation are very desperate,” he said. “They need land, they need to build their houses, they have children, schools to pay for; they need money so badly that they could follow some groups that would offer them money. So there is a risk.”

Saliev says his former boss withheld his pay and replaced Tajik employees who complained with Ukrainians, who have been flooding the Russian job market since war in eastern Ukraine began displacing the local population.

Before the new Russian labor policy, Saliev’s salary — roughly 29,000 rubles a month, or about $900 before the ruble crashed — let him pay for his wedding and his sister’s wedding and even to buy a plot of land, But now, if Saliev wants to go back to Russia, he’d have to save every penny of the approximately $100 per month he makes doing odd construction jobs for at least half a year to pay for the new work permits, because a high school dropout such as him can’t pass the entry test without a prep course or paying a bribe. His salary isn’t even enough to support his wife and two children, he says.

The extent of the Central Asian recruiting threat is unclear. Russian diplomats routinely warn of a pipeline of fighters running from Central Asia to extremist groups in Syria and Iraq, and there is ample anecdotal evidence of Tajiks — from the security officer to university students and migrant workers — joining the Islamic State. But Western academics studying the region say such warnings are overblown — bolstered perhaps by national agendas and f global security concerns.

The idea that Islamist extremist groups would seek Tajiks as foot soldiers in their armed quest for a caliphate is both obvious and paradoxical.

Tajikistan has a long, largely unsecured border with Afghanistan that could be as open to extremist transit as it has been to an illicit regional drug trade.

But Tajikistan’s religious Muslim population exists under the fiercely secular authoritarian government of Emomali Rahmon, which banned face veils for women and children under age 18 attending mosques, shut down scores of religious schools and is reported to support forced shavings of men with beards, to keep the religious look off the streets of Tajikistan.

The anti-Islamist mood has become so strong that the Islamic Revival Party — an opposition group that has participated in Tajik politics since the country’s post-Soviet civil war — complains the government is scapegoating them instead of addressing the socioeconomic roots of instability they say are fueling rising interest in the Islamic State.

“If the authorities could make it possible for people to work and live, I do not think there would be any radical groups — people would not want to join,” said Hikmatullo Saifullozoda, head of the analytical center of the Islamic Revival Party, which he described as “a shield against spreading radicalism” that disproportionately targets “very vulnerable” migrant laborers.

“If you can’t find work, if you can’t provide for yourself, and you live in this system with a high level of corruption — a person will either become a criminal or go to support the Islamic State,” said Oinihol Bobonazarova, a well-known human rights activist who ran as the main opposition candidate for president a few years ago.

“In most cases, those people that go are very poor. It’s not about religion, it’s about poverty.”

Bobonazarova likened Tajikistan’s dependence on the Russian market to a “hostage situation.” In fact, Russia’s role in perpetuating the instability roiling Tajikistan goes deeper than this migration law: It’s in Russia, experts say, where Tajiks and other Central Asian migrants are exposed to extremist ideologies, in the mosques they attend alongside Chechens and other Muslim communities with closer ties to the Islamic State.

“If migrants are going to Syria from Russia, nobody will know how they got there,” said Muzaffar Olimov, director of the SHARQ Research Center in Dushanbe, who said that while radicalized Tajiks may head to Syria, they won’t inspire widespread social support for religious fundamentalist groups or an Arab Spring-style social uprising on the home front. “For that you would need different circumstances, different facts — people just don’t want to go for that here.”

Still, in a country where the average age is under 24, salaries are a fraction of what they are in Russia and nearly 20 percent of young men who stay in-country are unemployed, growing instability is a real concern that almost certainly can’t be settled domestically.

“Tajiks basically rely on God and the hope that everything will be okay,” said Muhammed Ziyo, 26, a former migrant worker who now peddles his skills as an electrician and technician in Dushanbe’s informal day labor markets.

Ziyo returned two years ago, when his father became ill. Then his son was born. Now he would go back to Russia, but with five mouths to feed on about $250 a month — if he’s lucky enough to get work — he could never afford the new permits.

Ziyo sees only one way out: If Tajikistan joins Russia’s customs union, all barriers to work eligibility would be lifted. Over 70 percent of the country favors that option, according to Olimov. But for now, Ziyo plans to just hang on and avoid any high-paying offers for high-risk rewards.

“I believe in God, and so I just say thanks to God, even if I find only a crust of bread in a day,” he said. “That’s how I avoid this temptation, even if life is not easy.”

July 11, 2015

A judge sentenced a Detroit-area cancer doctor to 45 years in prison Friday for a massive scheme to collect millions from insurance companies while poisoning hundreds of patients through needless treatments that wrecked their health.

U.S. District Judge Paul Borman this week heard stories of brittle bones and fried organs as patients chillingly described the effects of excessive chemotherapy at the hands of Dr. Farid Fata.

"This is a huge, horrific series of criminal acts," Borman said before announcing the sentence.

Fata, 50, offered no excuses before getting his punishment. Stone-faced all week in court, he repeatedly broke down in loud sobs as he begged for mercy Friday.

"I misused my talents, yes, and permitted this sin to enter me because of power and greed," Fata said. "My quest for power is self-destructive."

He said his patients came to him seeking "compassionate care" but "I failed, yes, I failed."

Fata, 50, pleaded guilty last year to fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. He didn't strike a deal with prosecutors, so Borman needed much of the week to hear details about treatments. Patients hired a bus to get to court Monday.

"He preyed on our trust, our exhaustion, our fears," said Ellen Piligiam, whose late father, a doctor, was administered powerful drugs he didn't need for a tumor in his shoulder.

Federal prosecutor Catherine Dick had asked for a 175-year prison sentence. Fata sought 25 years.

"It is not mob justice. It is appropriate for this crime," Dick told the judge, referring to the extraordinary request.

The government identified 553 victims, along with insurance companies. Medicare and insurers paid at least $17 million.

The patients were "women and men, old and young, of every race, religion, creed, profession, temperament and understanding," prosecutors said in a court filing.

Fata will get credit for about two years served in custody since his arrest in 2013. His stay in the federal prison system also could be shortened with good behavior.

His clinic, Michigan Hematology Oncology, had seven offices in the Detroit area and a related business that performed tests to look for cancer. Testifying for the government, two experts from Harvard medical school said they were troubled after looking at a small portion of patient files.

"There is an aggressive approach to treating cancer. This was beyond. This was over the top," Dr. Dan Longo said.

July 11, 2015

Arnold Palmer proposed it. Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods pursued it.

Those are the three biggest names in golf over the last half-century, combining for 214 wins on the PGA Tour and 39 majors. They all came to Scotland - Palmer at St. Andrews, Nicklaus and Woods at Muirfield - with hopes of a Grand Slam, the holy grail in golf. They all failed.

The next opportunity falls to a 21-year-old Texan who is ahead of his time.

Jordan Spieth might not have seemed like the ideal candidate to be halfway to a sweep of the four professional majors.

All he had at the start of the season was one PGA Tour victory, a great short game and an uncanny sense of the moment. It was more than enough at Augusta National, where Spieth set one scoring record and tied two others in a runaway victory at the Masters. It was barely enough at Chambers Bay, where he outlasted Dustin Johnson for a one-shot victory in the U.S. Open.

The next stop on this amazing ride? The British Open on the Old Course at St. Andrews, a place dripping with the kind of history Spieth wants to make.

To appreciate what Spieth has done to this point, look at the company he is keeping. Only five other players since the Masters began in 1934 have won the first two majors of the year. Ben Hogan is the only player to win the first three. That was in 1953 when the final two majors overlapped. Hogan's legs were so battered that he stopped playing the PGA Championship, a grueling week of match play, and instead won at Carnoustie in his only British Open appearance.

Spieth is aware of what he calls ''noise'' - the hype over his bid for a Grand Slam. And he is embracing it.

''To have an opportunity to get to a level where you would only include one name, and that's Ben Hogan, that would be pretty cool,'' Spieth said. ''And then maybe zero names after that.''

One name he won't have to worry about at St. Andrews is Rory McIlroy, the No. 1 player in the world.

Right when a new rivalry was starting to blossom - they have won the last four majors and are Nos. 1 and 2 in the world - McIlroy was playing soccer and ruptured a ligament in his left ankle. Eight days before the start of the Open, he was forced to withdraw.

Not since Hogan has a British Open not featured the defending champion.

''It's hugely disappointing, especially with him and Jordan and everything that's going on,'' Graeme McDowell said. ''No one would love to stop Jordan in his tracks more than Rory. With the fun rivalry going on and everything, he's going to be gutted.''

Even before the injury, this British Open was shaping up as the Spieth Show. And it still is.

It's not like St. Andrews needed a moment like this to be special. This is the 29th time that golf's oldest championship is held on golf's oldest links.

A shot at the Grand Slam doesn't come around very often.

St. Andrews is where Bobby Jones won the first leg of his Grand Slam in 1930 when it consisted of the British Amateur, British Open, U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open. As the professional game took over, Palmer cooked up the idea of a modern slam when he came over to St. Andrews for the first time in 1960 as the Masters and U.S. Open champion. He lost by one shot to Kel Nagle.

Nicklaus had his one chance in 1972, but his 66 in the final round at Muirfield was one shot short of Lee Trevino. Forty years later, along came Woods at the peak of his powers. Woods barely broke a sweat in winning the Masters and U.S. Open in 2002. He was only two shots out of the lead at Muirfield going into the weekend. And then he ran into his fiercest opponent - mother nature. Rain and a raging wind off the Firth of Forth helped send him to an 81 and ended his dream.

Now it falls to Spieth.

''He has, much like Tiger did, a real legitimate shot to win the first three legs of the slam,'' two-time U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange said. ''I think he can handle the pressure. I think he's that kind of customer.''

Spieth doesn't overpower golf courses like Woods once did, like McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson do now. But a good short game never goes out of style. And with each major victory, the confidence only grows.

''He's just got a lot of momentum right now,'' Zach Johnson said. ''He's got some qualities that you just can't see. They're hard to comprehend.''

Woods, meanwhile, has become an afterthought. He tied for 32nd in his final event before the Open, and this was seen as progress. He had the highest 36-hole score of his career when he missed the cut at the U.S. Open. He has gone nearly two years without winning.

Woods is among the few who can appreciate what Spieth is facing. Not only did he get halfway home to a Grand Slam in 2002, Woods swept all four majors over two seasons in 2000-01. The hardest part was waiting nearly eight months - a new year - for the final piece.

''When I won the three in a row in 2000, it seemed so much easier because it's only a month wait and you maybe play one tournament, or maybe you don't play a tournament, in between,'' he said. ''The wait from August to April was tough.

''Here, he's just got a month,'' Woods said. ''It just rolls right into the next.''

McIlroy's absence doesn't clear the way for Spieth. Winning is hard at any tournament. If not for Dustin Johnson missing a half-dozen putts inside 10 feet on the final day at Chambers Bay - including a three-putt from 12 feet on the 18th hole - there is no talk about a Grand Slam.

But there is. And four days over the Old Course at St. Andrews will determine if the ''noise'' around Spieth turns into the roar of a freight train.

July 8, 2015

Coveted free agent center DeAndre Jordan agreed to a four-year, $80 million deal with the Dallas Mavericks last week after seven seasons with the Clippers — but Jordan only gave the Mavericks a verbal commitment, and the Clippers are going all out to try and change Jordan’s mind.

Jordan is expected to meet with Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, coach Doc Rivers, Blake Griffin and J.J. Redick in Houston on Wednesday to discuss a potential return to the Clippers. Redick publiclyblasted the Clippers for failing to re-sign Jordan, giving the team a free agency grade of “F-minus.”

According to ESPN, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has flown to Houston as well, in what has become a bizarre race for Jordan’s signature. Mavericks star Chandler Parsons tweeted a plane emoji Wednesday, hinting that he is also part of the Mavericks’ contingent that will try to woo Jordan.

July 8, 2015

It didn’t take long for Paula Deen to take action after a photo of her and her son Bobby appeared on Twitter Monday. The embattled cook and Bobby were dressed as Lucy and Ricky from I Love Lucy, but Bobby darkened up his skin with makeup. And Twitter backlash ensued.

According to a rep for Deen, the photo wasn’t supposed to be posted on Twitter.

"Paula Deen's Social Media Manager posted a picture this morning of Paula and Bobby Deen dressed in costume as Lucy and Ricky, from I Love Lucy," her reps said in a statement to PEOPLE. "This photograph is from a Halloween episode of Paula’s Best Dishes that aired in 2011."

"Paula immediately had this picture taken down as soon as she saw the post and apologizes to all who were offended," the statement continues. "As such, Paula Deen Ventures has terminated their relationship with this Social Media Manager."

For the record, brownface was still a racist thing in 2011. You can dress as Ricky without darkening your skin. It also baffles me that people still thinks it’s ok to throw on brown or black makeup to look like someone else. But then again, some people are two cans short of a six-pack. In any event, maybe Donald Trump needs a new social media manager?

July 8, 2015

 A sexual assault awareness group is calling on President Obama to revoke the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to Bill Cosby in 2002, now that there have been allegations the 77-year-old comedian is a serial rapist.

The request raises thorny legal and political questions for a White House that has long championed sexual assault prevention. While the president can change the criteria for granting the nation's highest civilian honor with the stroke of a pen, no president has ever revoked the award once given.

"Certainly it is an unprecedented thing to take this away," said Angela Rose, founder of Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment, a decade-old sexual assault education and prevention group. "But it's also an unprecedented thing that this legend, this icon, over 40 women have accused this man, and that's unprecedented as well."

PAVE submitted a petition to the White House Wednesday. If it gets 100,000 electronic signatures in the next month, the White House has promised a formal response.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said he was unaware of the calls to revoke the medal when asked by reporters Wednesday.

"I haven't, at this point, heard any discussion of taking that step," he said. "I don't know whether or not it's legally possible to do so."

Unlike the Medal of Honor for military valor, the Medal of Freedom isn't authorized by Congress. President Truman established it by executive order in 1945 to recognize civilians who helped the war effort. President Kennedy expanded it in 1963 to include people who have made contributions through "cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

And so President George W. Bush awarded the medal to Cosby in 2002, in a class that also included baseball great Hank Aaron, children's television pioneer Fred Rogers and former First Lady Nancy Reagan.

"Bill Cosby is a gifted comedian who has used the power of laughter to heal wounds and to build bridges,"Bush said in awarding the medal. "By focusing on our common humanity, Bill Cosby is helping to create a truly united America."

In a court deposition unsealed this week, Cosby admitted to drugging women he wanted to sleep with, and dozens of women have alleged he assaulted them going back five decades.

Other than the medal itself, the Medal of Honor is symbolic and carries no benefits, so it's unclear how it would be revoked.

"There's a huge amount of uncertainty here," said Kenneth Mayer, a presidential scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While he said it's probably within the president's power to disavow the honor, getting the physical medal back might be another matter now that Cosby owns it.

Revoking Cosby's medal would also create a precedent that could have repercussions for future presidents and honorees, so it's not something the White House would likely do lightly, Mayer said.

"Even if there's a legal ability to do this, it's not a road that people want to start going down," he said. "There are titanic issues of presidential power that have arisen by what seemed at the time like trivial circumstances."

July 8, 2015

Perhaps more than any other presidential candidate, Sen. Lindsey Graham enjoys telling people to vote for somebody else.

"Radical Islam is not going to be compromised with. They are religious Nazis. Somebody better go over there and hit them before they hit us," Graham said Wednesday. "There is no alternative to going in on the ground and pulling the caliphate up by the roots. If that scares you, don't vote for me."

On Wednesday, that could apply to the member of the anti-war group Code Pink who went on a diatribe during the question-and-answer session that followed the South Carolina Republican's foreign policy rollout at the Atlantic Council.

"I'm going to put her down as 'undecided,'" Graham said as event staff wrangled a microphone away from the protester. "This is your country as much as mine. You've got a right to every opinion you've expressed, right? I couldn't disagree with you more. I think people like you make the world incredibly dangerous. I think people like you are radical Islam's best hope."

It's never a secret what Graham thinks, particularly when it comes to his plans for war in the Middle East. And in making his campaign pitch for foreign policy, the Republican presidential candidate from South Carolina promised more of what anyone who's talked to Graham would expect — for better or worse.

"I will always tell the American people the truth about what we need to do to be safe. My message at times may be hard to hear," Graham said in prepared remarks. "But I will never leave our nation vulnerable out of deference to polls. My commitment is simple: whatever it takes, as long as it takes, until we defeat them."

During the event, Graham quipped that reading his whole speech would run afoul of the Geneva Conventions, but he darted around the conflict zones, taking some shots at other presidential candidates along the way. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the candidate furthest from Graham on the ideological scale when it comes to the United States' role in the world, was dubbed the one Republican who could cut a worse deal with the Iranian government over nuclear weapons than President Barack Obama.

But on this day, Graham was at his most strident on what to do in Syria against both President Bashar Assad and the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

"We never fix Assad unless he goes," Graham said. "The caliphate mainly exists in Syria. It would be a large military operation."

Graham envisions a U.S.-led multinational force, with significant contributions of both blood and treasure from countries in the region.

"Ten thousand — probably us because I don't want to lose. You're going to need a large force. There are ... 30,000 or 40,000 ISIL guys, only God knows how many. I'm not looking for a fair fight here," Graham said. "I'm looking for a large regional army where the vast majority would be Arabs and Turks, but I fear if they go in without us they could actually lose."

When Graham asked Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter at a Tuesday Armed Services hearing, "What's more likely – President Obama leaves office in 2017 or Assad goes first?" Carter replied, "Well, I certainly hope it's Assad."

The scope of U.S. involvement in the world envisioned by Graham — both militarily and through programs such as building schools for girls in Afghanistan and working to eradicate HIV in Africa — are not cheap. And his bluntness about long-term budgetary challenges might be one reason he has barely registered in many GOP polls.

Graham reiterated he would would work with Democrats on overhauling entitlement programs, including what he called "a revenue component."

"Sequestration has to be replaced, and you also should replace non-defense spending, too," Graham said, highlighting reductions that would come to the FBI and other domestic security agencies if Congress doesn't act.

It's a big foreign policy week for Graham, which is the arena in which he seems to think he can make the most persuasive case to conservative voters, even if polls show him getting little traction (and could perhaps block him from the early TV debates). On Tuesday morning, he was among the Armed Services Committee members prodding Carter and other members of Pentagon brass on the fight against ISIS and on Tuesday afternoon he was working to advance his State Department spending bill.

While that bill reflects many of his priorities, he appears unlikely to get his way on restricting expanded U.S. operations in Cuba, including the reopening of the embassy that was announced earlier this month.

"I like the House language far better than what we were able to do," Graham told CQ Roll Call Tuesday, pointing to more restrictive language on U.S.-Cuba policy on the other side of the Capitol. "We just didn't have the votes, in my view, to get the language of the House."

He said he was considering offering an amendment, calling Obama's decision to reopen the embassy a "bad idea." Republican and Democratic members of the Appropriations Committee said the outcome of such a vote could depend on Republicans who have been supportive of expanding trade with the island country.

Graham will celebrate his 60th birthday Thursday by advancing that State-Foreign Operations measure through the full committee before departing for a weekend campaign swing through the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire, where he's scheduled to appear at a winery, a tavern, a country store and yes, even a town dump.

June 30, 2015

Doctors in Belgium are granting a healthy 24-year-old woman who is suffering from depression the right to die, as she qualifies for euthanasia, even though she does not have a terminal or life-threatening illness.

The 24-year-old female, known simply as Laura, has been given the go ahead by health professionals in Belgium to receive a lethal injection after spending both her childhood and adult life suffering from "suicidal thoughts," she told local Belgian media.

Laura has been a patient of a psychiatric institution since the age of 21 and says she has previously tried to kill herself on several occasions. She told journalists: "Death feels to me not as a choice. If I had a choice, I would choose a bearable life, but I have done everything and that was unsuccessful." The date of Laura's death is yet to be decided.

Belgium passed a law to legalise euthanasia in 2002, the second country in the world to do so after the Netherlands. The law states that Belgian doctors can "help patients" to end their lives if they freely express a wish to die because they are suffering from intractable and unbearable pain.

Dr Marc Van Hoey, a general practitioner and president of the Right to Die Association in northern Belgium, is a vocal supporter of the legislation. Van Hoey told theIndependentnewspaper that he believes that sometimes euthanasia is the kindest option. "I've seen quite a lot of persons dying in - how do you say in proper English - agony?" Van Hoey said. "I never saw that when I gave someone euthanasia he or she asked for."

Over the past few years there has been a sharp increase in the number of euthanasia cases in Belgium. In 2013, there were 1,807 deaths recorded compared with 1,432 in 2012. More than half of last year's cases were patients aged 70 and over but there are increasing numbers of young people requesting to die legally, with the majority citing depression as their "intractable and unbearable pain."

However, not everyone is in favour of the law. Carine Brochier, a project manager with the Brussels-based European Institute of Bioethics, tells Newsweek that she believes too many people are dying as a result of Belgium's liberalised euthanasia laws.

She argues that many people who experience psychological suffering and treatable mental illnesses may be wrongly given the go ahead for euthanasia because "there is absolutely no way for healthcare professionals to measure another person's mental suffering to decide if they should receive euthanasia."

"Euthanasia is not the answer to all human suffering," Brochier continues. "We need to develop better palliative care for people," something she believes Belgium is not currently doing.

Earlier this year in February, the parliament in Belgium passed a bill also allowing euthanasia for terminally ill children without any age limit, by 86 votes to 44. The vote makes it the first country in the world to have legalised euthanasia without an age limit.

In the Netherlands, the first country to legalize euthanasia, sick children are allowed to request it, but only if they are 12 years or older.

As of June 2015, euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia and Luxembourg.

June 30, 2015

An Indonesian air force transport plane crashed Tuesday into a residential neighborhood in the country's third-largest city of Medan, killing dozens of people.

Television footage showed the wreckage of the downed C-130 Hercules, a crumpled burning car and a shattered building that local media said contained a spa. Smoke billowed from the site and several thousand people milled nearby.

North Sumatra police chief Eko Hadi Sutedjo told reporters that the plane was carrying 50 people based on its manifest.

He said 37 bodies have been transported to Medan's Adam Malik hospital and include a child who was probably about a year old.

None of the bodies has been identified and it's unclear how many of the victims are military personnel and how many are civilians, Sutedjo said.

The crash of the transport plane occurred just two minutes after it took off from Soewondo air force base.

Air force chief Air Marshall Agus Supriatna said the pilot told the control tower that the plane needed to turn back because of engine trouble.

"The plane crashed while it was turning right to return to the airport," Supriatna said.

Medan resident Fahmi Sembiring said he saw the gray Hercules flying very low as he was driving.

"Flames and black smoke were coming from the plane in the air," he said.

Sembiring said he stopped not far from the crash site and saw several people rescued by police, security guards and bystanders.

Indonesia has a patchy aviation safety record. Between 2007 and 2009, the European Union barred Indonesian airlines from flying to Europe because of safety concerns. The country's most recent civilian airline disaster was in December, when an AirAsia jet with 162 people on board crashed into the Java Sea en route from Surabaya to Singapore.

The C-130 accident is the second time in 10 years that an airplane has crashed into a Medan neighborhood. In September 2005, a Mandala Airlines Boeing 737 crashed into a crowded residential community shortly after takeoff from Medan's Polonia airport, killing 143 people including 30 on the ground.

Medan, with about 3.4 million people, is the third most populous city in Indonesia after the capital, Jakarta, and Surabaya.

June 29, 2015

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took issue with the notion that marriage equality restores dignity to gay people, and insisted that enslaved people kept their dignity. “Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away,” Thomas wrote in his dissent.

June 29, 2015

A survey of South Carolina legislators shows there's enough support to remove the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds if all supporters cast a vote.

The Post and Courier newspaper, the South Carolina Press Association and The Associated Press asked all lawmakers how they intend to vote. At least 33 senators and 82 House members say they the flag should go.

That appears to meet the two-thirds majority needed from both chambers to move the battle flag. That rule is part of the 2000 compromise that took the flag off the Statehouse dome and put a square version beside a monument to Confederate soldiers.

The flag push follows the shooting deaths of nine people at a black church in Charleston. The pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, was among the dead.

June 29, 2015

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a 2016 presidential candidate, is publicly feuding with one of the closest advisers of the last Republican president. 

The fight between Cruz and Karl Rove, a veteran GOP consultant who guided George W. Bush's presidential campaigns, spilled out into the open over the weekend. Among other things, Cruz published emails that he said prove Rove is lying about events that took place six years ago.

"It's disappointing; this is why people are so cynical about politics, because too many people are willing to lie," Cruz said in a statement accompanying the emails. 

Cruz was taking issue with Rove's Sunday statement accusing him of misrepresenting their interactions back in 2009, when Cruz was looking at running for Texas state attorney general, according to The Dallas Morning News.

The Dallas newspaper reported that Cruz claims in his new book, "A Time for Truth," that Rove demanded he downplay a contribution he received from former President George H.W. Bush, and that Rove had insulted Bush's ability to make such endorsements.

"He suggested that the elder Bush was too old to have good judgment anymore," Cruz reportedly wrote in his book, adding that Rove threatened to have George W. Bush endorse his primary opponent. "I was offended by that characterization and knew from my visit with 41 that it wasn't remotely true."

But in his statement — titled "A Time for Setting the Record Straight" — Rove insisted he never dissed the elder Bush. Rove said he was only concerned about the former president weighing in on the Texas attorney general's race while the incumbent Republican had yet to say whether or not he would run for reelection. (He ultimately ran for reelection that year; Cruz ran for the US Senate instead in 2012.)

"Mr. Cruz's account is wrong in other particulars, starting with an implication I would question the judgment of one of the finest men I have ever known, President Bush 41, whom I went to work for when I was 22 years old and have revered ever since," Rove wrote.

Rove further wrote that, at the time, he "was not raising money for the Bush Library, nor was former President Bush 43 going to endorse some unnamed Dallas state representative for state attorney general, nor were any library donors 'berating' me" — as Cruz's book claims.

Rove also took a not-so-subtle shot at Cruz's record, which he said compared unfavorably to that of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), one of Cruz's GOP rivals in the 2016 presidential race.

"One piece of advice I offered was that he should stop describing himself as the 'next Marco Rubio,' since he did not have Senator Rubio’s outstanding legislative record of accomplishments as speaker of the Florida House of Representatives," Rove recalled.

But in his own statement reacting to Rove's, Cruz said it was Rove who was lying. 

"I have known Karl Rove for a long time, and have considered him a friend. I understood that my recounting in my book A Time for Truth the threats he made in the 2009 Texas Attorney General race — and the disparaging remarks he made about President George H.W. Bush — would cause him some discomfort," the senator said. "But I never imagined that his response would be a straight-out falsehood."

He added, "Below is email correspondence, contemporaneous from that week, demonstrating the veracity of my account."

The emails released by Cruz's presidential campaign appear to show Rove doing two of the things he implied he was not doing at the time: discussing Bush library donors and taking Cruz's possible opponent seriously in the state attorney general's race.

Here are the emails:

From: Karl Rove 
To: Ted Cruz 
Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 8:24 AM
Subject: Re: Follow-up from today

thanks -- I appreciate your doing what you can to keep this down -- the distress you mention is not mine or 43 -- it is the people raising money for the library who are also Branch fans and will not understand why one part of the Bush family is for not-the-guy while they are raising money big bucks for library.

Thanks too for clarifying that you asked to visit with 41; be as nonchulant [sic] as possible about the gift and we'll muddle through

On Jul 1, 2009, at 12:49 AM, Ted Cruz wrote:

Karl,

I am very sorry if I have done anything to distress you or President Bush 43 in any way.

Over the past several years, you've been extraordinarily generous in providing advice and insight re the AG campaign, and I have endeavored to follow your wise counsel to the letter. When we last spoke in January, you advised that the best way to convince Branch not to run was to bring aboard as many "old bulls" across the state as possible, so that the rest of the state would counteract his natural base in Highland Park. Since then, I've spent 18 hours a day doing nothing but working to follow that course of action, and we've been fortunate to enjoy significant success.

None of that matters, though. I got my start in politics (such as it was) working for you and for President Bush 43, and I've spent much of my adult life working to support the President. The last thing I would ever want to do is place either of you in a difficult situation.

When I asked to visit with President Bush 41, and he very kindly agreed, I imagined that we would spend maybe 20 minutes talking about the race, he would give his insights on Texas politics, and that would be it. I could not have been more astonished when he offered his support and gave me a personal check for the campaign.

Obviously, I recognize that President Bush 41's support is a very big deal, and inded [sic] I had been in discussions with his office about our issuing a press release about the endorsement. Given the concerns you expressed this afternoon, I have told 41's office that we will skip the press release altogether (see below).

His support will of course attract attention (much of which will be beyond my control), but I will very much follow your counsel to downplay the support and not highlight it in any way.

My hope is that this race will ultimately end up in a win-win scenario, that Dan will choose to run for the new Dallas congressional seat that will be drawn in 2012 and that he and I can work together as friends and allies for a long time. I know that a number of key donors have been urging precisely that course of action, which, if Dan were to choose to follow, would perhaps alleviate some of the concerns we discussed.

I know that it doesn't rise to the importance of what you have been doing these past eight years, but I do think there is a real need right now for new leadership in the Republican Party, and I am hopeful that this campaign can play at least some role in helping provide that leadership. Your legacy and President Bush 43's legacy, and especially the enormous progress y'all made in the Hispanic community, are too important not to keep pressing ahead.

Karl, you've been a friend and mentor a long time, and I value that friendship immensely. 
Please let me know anything I can possibly do to address your and President Bush 43's concerns.

Thanks so much.

Ted.

Jean,

I spoke with Karl this afternoon, and he expressed real concerns that our drawing attention to President Bush 41's very kind support of the campaign would put President Bush 43 in a difficult position. The last thing I want to do is cause any trouble, so it's probably wiser just to forego this press release.

So, unless you disagree, I think it probably makes sense simply to include 41 on our overall list of donors, but not to do any separate release or anything highlighting his support, for which I remain deeply, deeply grateful.

Thanks so much,

Ted.

June 29, 2015

NBC ended its relationship with real estate developer and TV personality Donald Trump and his "Miss USA" and "Miss Universe" pageants on Monday after he made comments insulting Mexicans when he began his run for president.

The pageants, which are part of a joint venture between NBCUniversal and Trump, would no longer air on NBC "due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants" the company said in a press release.

Trump was already not going to take part in "The Apprentice" on NBC, a show in which he uses "You're Fired!" as his signature command to eliminate contestants. NBC said "Celebrity Apprentice" licensed from United Artists Media Group would continue.

Univision said on Thursday that it would not air the Miss USA pageant on July 12 because of Trump's remarks. Trump's lawyer said the billionaire would sue the U.S. Spanish-language TV network.

Trump said on Monday after the NBC announcement that he was no longer affiliated with the broadcaster but stood by his campaign trail comments.

"Mr. Trump stands by his statements on illegal immigration, which are accurate. NBC is weak, and like everybody else is trying to be politically correct - that is why our country is in serious trouble," a Trump Organization statement said.

Trump, in announcing on June 16 that he was seeking the Republican Party nomination for the November 2016 presidential election, described migrants from Mexico to the United States as drug-runners and rapists.

"They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some I assume are good people, but I speak to border guards and they tell us what we are getting," he said in opening his campaign at Trump Tower on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.

Trump's provocative comments, including a pledge to build a "great wall" on the border paid for by Mexico if he were elected, were the latest in a series of swipes against the United States's southern neighbor.

Mexicans rich and poor, cabinet ministers and staunch critics of the government alike reacted angrily to Trump. Trump defended his more divisive remarks on the grounds that he was worried about border security, jobs in the United States and trade arrangements.

Univision said it would also sever ties with the Miss Universe Organization, a joint venture between Trump and Comcast-owned NBCUniversal.

On Monday, when Trump spoke at the City Club in Chicago, a crowd of protesters, many of them Latinos, demonstrated outside, Chicago media reported. "Trump is a racist," they shouted.

Trump spoke to a sold-out crowd of 350 people at the City Club. Hundreds more had tried to get tickets and were put on a wait list, the public policy forum said.

Political analysts have said Trump, despite being one of America's most recognizable figures, is considered a long shot candidate in the field of more than a dozen Republicans.

Trump also made inflammatory comments about fellow Republicans and the administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

May 26, 2015

Northrop Grumman has a new idea for exploring Venus. Announced earlier this month, the Venus Atmospheric Maneuverability Platform (or VAMP) would let NASA skim Venus's upper atmosphere with an inflatable aircraft, deployed from space.

Since the craft is self-inflated, it would be light enough to stay aloft with little to no energy, but still be maneuverable enough to navigate Venus's significant atmospheric winds and durable enough to withstand the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere. The VAMP is designed for NASA's New Frontiers program, which looks for innovative approaches to space exploration. If NASA likes the craft enough to fund it, the VAMP could be exploring the clouds of Venus in just ten years.

Many in the space industry are already seeing Venus as a more practical alternative to Mars exploration. The planet is typically closer than Mars, thanks to a more convenient orbital cycle, making exploratory missions significantly simpler. The surface of the planet is uninhabitable, hot and dense enough to melt lead, but a settlement floating in Venus's clouds would find temperatures, pressures, and radiation levels remarkably similar to Earth.

The most comprehensive mission to Venus came in 2005, when the European Space Agency launched a scientific probe called the Venus Express. At the end of last year, scientists at NASA's Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate proposed solar-powered blimps as a way for humans to establish permanent settlements in the Venusian clouds. The system was called the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept, or HAVOC for short.

"The vast majority of people, when they hear the idea of going to Venus and exploring, think of the surface, where it’s hot enough to melt lead and the pressure is the same as if you were almost a mile underneath the ocean," HAVOC engineer Chris Jones told IEEE in December. "I think that not many people have gone and looked at the relatively much more hospitable atmosphere and how you might tackle operating there for a while."

Northrop Grumman's proposed craft would be more like the Venus Express than HAVOC, gathering scientific measurements rather than hosting live humans. But the VAMP would reach deeper into Venus's atmosphere than the Express did, gathering more information and providing crucial practical experience in how to outfit a craft to survive in Venus's unique atmosphere. Still, without NASA support, the VAMP is still only a concept, and we won't know whether agency wants to fund the project until it announces the New Frontiers mission next year.

May 26, 2015

The United States’ top diplomat once called this cloistered nation the last dictatorship in Europe. Its fearsome security services are still named the KGB. But after a year of geo­political conflict with Russia, some in the West say Belarus may not be so bad after all.

Recently, senior European Union leaders have paid visits to President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled his nation with an iron grip since 1994. Top State Department leaders have dropped by, even though the last U.S. ambassador was expelled seven years ago. And last week, Belarusan leaders participated in an E.U. summit intended to help former Soviet nations move away from Russia and build stronger ties with Europe.

Western officials have started to feel that isolating Belarus was simply driving it closer to Russia.

Lukashenko has reveled in the attention after tacking away from Russia on its tough policies toward Ukraine. He has boasted of his diplomatic successes — while still taking a hard line against his country’s beleaguered opposition. Even those opponents say they are now cautious about pushing too hard against him, afraid that Russia could take advantage of any ensuing turmoil, as it did in Ukraine.

The Belarusan thaw with the West is a sign of the shifting alliances in Europe a year into the bloodiest conflict on that continent since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The Russian seizure of Crimea was the first forcible land grab on European soil since World War II, and it has petrified Russia’s neighbors, who worry that they could be next. Many leaders are searching for ways to protect themselves, walking a fine line between trying not to provoke nuclear-armed Russia and building ties with other countries that could help them.

Lukashenko has vowed that Russia will always be Belarus’s most important partner. And his nation’s Soviet-style economy remains deeply dependent on Russian support. But he also has forged an independent path, refusing to recognize the annexation of Crimea, pledging friendship with the new pro-European leadership of Ukraine and encouraging a Belarusan national identity separate from Russia’s.

“I’m not Europe’s last dictator anymore,” he joked to a Bloomberg News reporter who interviewed him this spring, referring to a 2005 claim by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “There are dictators a bit worse than me, no? I’m the lesser evil already.”

Belarus’s new approach started last year, after the annexation of Crimea upended security assumptions in Europe. Lukashenko, 60, has long been one of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s strongest allies, in part because of his country’s need for an economic lifeline from Russia, which buys nearly half of the exports of Belarus’s deeply inefficient industries.

But Ukraine is also a major Belarusan trading partner, and the two nations share a 675-mile-long frontier as well as many cultural similarities. The Belarusan language, suppressed under the Soviets, is a close cousin to Ukrainian. Fearful of cutting contacts with Ukraine, Belarus voted against the Crimea annexation in the United Nations.

E.U. leaders were also ready for a change in strategy. They had largely cut off Belarus with sanctions and travel bans targeting its leadership after a brutal crackdown following the 2010 presidential election. Opposition candidates were imprisoned and beaten. Now, most of them live in exile.

But seeing an opening after the Crimea conflict, top ­European officials changed their approach.

Diplomats involved ­­in the process say their old efforts were designed to try to oust Lukashenko, who has ruled ­Belarus with near-absolute authority for most of its independent existence.

The new efforts aim to strengthen ties with Belarus, a landlocked nation of 9.5 million people, with the hope that ordinary Belarusans will slowly increase their demands for a European path of democratic development. If Belarus is less isolated, it also will be less dependent on Russia, the officials said.

“For the last 20 years, metaphorically speaking, Belarus for Europe has been a bit like Cuba for the United States,” said Andrejs Pildegovics, state secretary of the Latvian Foreign Ministry, who has been a leader of the new outreach, which includes cooperation to modernize Belarus’s education system and to make borders more open.

“President Lukashenko will never be Vaclav Havel,” the esteemed leader of post-Soviet Czechoslovakia, Pildegovics said, “but he’s not Milosevic, either,” the brutal Serbian strongman.

Critics say that the warmer relations could leave Lukashenko entrenched while doing little to push him to be less tough on his opposition. They also say that the country is so economically dependent on Russia that Lukashenko’s outreach may simply be an attempt to get a better bargaining position for further Kremlin ­largesse.

The Belarusan ruble has dropped 34 percent against the dollar since the beginning of 2014. Russian purchasing has diminished because of the economic crisis there. And the collapse in oil prices has robbed Belarus of another major source of income.

“A serious distancing from Russia is impossible, simply because we’re so tied to them right now,” said Valery Karbalevich, who wrote a biography of Lukashenko.

Belarusan officials say that they are simply seeking decent relations with all of their neighbors and that no country can be happy with a war in a bordering nation.

“Let’s be sincere. Europe cannot replace Russia for us, at least not today. We understand that in difficult times, we will always be with Russia,” Belarusan Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei said in an interview. “But that doesn’t mean that Russia is going to be suspicious if we develop normal relations with the European Union.

“We are not afraid that somebody wants to invade us. But we do not want an economic collapse to happen here,” he said.

The country’s small opposition movement, which has been marginalized for more than 20 years, is divided about how to handle the new initiatives from Europe ahead of a presidential election planned for the end of the year. Most activists say they welcome stronger ties with Europe. And they recognize new limits on their own power from an electorate that now associates street protests with the violence and instability in Ukraine.

But some say that improved E.U. ties should not come at the expense of easing pressure on Lukashenko to treat his critics more humanely. Opposition activists are routinely detained for stints of 15 days at a time. Many also find that they are shut out of the job market. And Belarus has about half a dozen political prisoners, according to rights groups.

“Despite the fact that there is no democracy in Belarus, the country shouldn’t be closed,” said Alexander Milinkevich, who ran against Lukashenko in the 2006 presidential election. He said that if Belarusan mentalities are to become more Western, the population needs stronger ties with European countries.

“The more Europe we have in our heads, the more democratic we will be. I don’t think there’s any alternative to this,” he said.

May 26, 2015

Recovery teams are set to resume looking for the 12 members of two families who authorities say are missing after a rain-swollen river in Central Texas carried a vacation home off its foundation, slamming it into a bridge downstream.

Trey Hatt, a spokesman for the Hays County Emergency Operations Center, said Monday night that the "search component" of the mission was over, meaning no more survivors were expected to be found in the flood debris along the Blanco River. But recovery efforts were to resume Tuesday morning, following a long holiday weekend of severe weather that led to four confirmed fatalities across the state.

Authorities were also searching for victims and assessing damage just across the Texas-Mexico border in Ciudad Acuna, where a tornado Monday killed 13 people and left at least five unaccounted for.

In the U.S., a line of storms that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes dumped record rainfall on parts of the Plains and Midwest, spawning tornadoes and causing major flooding that in Texas destroyed or damaged more than 1,000 homes and forced at least 2,000 residents to leave their homes.

"You cannot candy coat it. It's absolutely massive," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said after touring the destruction.

The governor has declared disaster areas in 37 counties so far, allowing for further mobilization of state resources to assist.

The worst flooding damage was in Wimberley, where the vacation home was swept away, a popular tourist town along the Blanco in the corridor between Austin and San Antonio.

Witnesses reported seeing the swollen river push the home off its foundation and smash it into a bridge. Only pieces of the home have been found, Hays County Judge Bert Cobb said.

One person who was rescued from the home told workers that the other 12 inside were all connected to two families, Cobb said. Young children were among those believed to be missing.

The Blanco crested above 40 feet — more than triple its flood stage of 13 feet. The river swamped Interstate 35 and forced parts of the busy north-south highway to close. Rescuers used pontoon boats and a helicopter to pull people out.

Hundreds of trees along the Blanco were uprooted or snapped, and they collected in piles of debris that soared 20 feet high.

Flooding wreaked havoc late Monday afternoon in Austin, where emergency crews responded to more than 20 high-water rescues, and later in Houston, where the National Weather Service declared a flash flood emergency and an announcer at the Houston Rockets game asked fans not to leave because of severe weather.

The storm system also prompted reports of tornadoes across the state and was blamed for four deaths: a man whose body was pulled from the Blanco; a 14-year-old who was found with his dog in a storm drain; a high school senior who died Saturday after her car was caught in high water; and a man whose mobile home was destroyed by a reported tornado.

The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management also reported four fatalities between Saturday and Monday across the state, which also saw severe flooding and reported tornadoes.

In Ciudad Acuna, Mayor Evaristo Perez Rivera said 300 people were treated at local hospitals after the twister, and up to 200 homes had been completely destroyed. The government was talking with families whose homes had been damaged to determine how much assistance would be needed to rebuild the city of 125,000 across from Del Rio, Texas.

"We have never registered in the more than 100 years in the history of this city a tornado," he said.

By midday, 13 people were confirmed dead — 10 adults and three infants. At least five people were unaccounted for.

The twister hit a seven-block area, which Victor Zamora, interior secretary of the northern state of Coahuila, described as "devastated."

"There's nothing standing, not walls, not roofs," said Edgar Gonzalez, a spokesman for the city government, describing some of the destroyed homes in a 3-square kilometer (1 square mile) stretch.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was expected to travel to Acuna with officials from government agencies.

Gonzalez said late Monday night that rescuers were looking for four members of a family who were believed missing, adding that there were still areas of rubble that remained to be searched. Zamora said rescuers were searching for an infant who was missing after the tornado ripped the baby carrier the child was in from its mother's hands.

Luis Antonio Hernandez, 37, looked in disbelief Monday at what remained of his house. Three vehicles had smashed through the back, leaving a heap of twisted metal and the smell of gasoline.

Hernandez and his three children had hidden in a bathroom as the tornado sent the cars passing over them. "It's a miracle that we're alive," he said.

Residents retraced the tornado's path in trucks, hoping to salvage their mattresses, furniture and other belongings. But there was little left intact.

Antonio Sanchez's home was now nothing more than an open shell strewn with rubble.

"We lost everything," he said. "But at least I didn't lose my family."

May 25, 2015

In late April, the Boston Public Library discovered two works of art had gone missing from their collection: an etching by Rembrandt and an engraving by Albrecht Durer. Together, the pieces are valued at around $625,000, with the Durer piece being worth $600,000 and the Rembrandt between $20,000 and $30,000.

The library reported the disappearance on April 29, according to the Boston Herald. A supervisor at the library first noticed the absence of the works in early April. A source told the Herald the works could have been missing for as long as a year.

The Anti-Corruption Unit of the Boston Police Department is investigating the case. Authorities suspect it may have been an inside job, the Herald reported.

Employees of the library are working with the police in the investigation and are taking an inventory of their collection. The prints were not on display when they went missing.

The collection, which includes over 200,000 prints and drawings, is being searched thoroughly by the staff as part of the investigation. The library will also undergo an independent investigation of their security.  

“It is our hope that these two significant pieces have simply been misfiled,” Boston Public Library president Amy Ryan said in a statement. “While strict procedures for viewing items in the collection are in place, it is always a balance to fulfill our obligation to make collections open to the public to study and enjoy, while preserving them and keeping them secure.”

Albrecht Dürer’s The Fall of Man (Adam and Eve). Wikimedia Commons

Both pieces are small and could have been filed incorrectly: The Durer engraving, Adam and Eve, is the size of a piece of paper, 8 inches by 11 inches; the Rembrandt etching, Self Portrait With Plumed Cap and Lowered Sabre, is 5 inches by 6 inches. 

Boston is home to one of the most famous cases of missing artwork in modern history: The art heist of 1990 left 13 holes in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s collection. The empty frames from these pieces remain on the walls.

May 24, 2015

An anonymous racist sent a hate note to an African-American family in Long Island, telling them “YOU DON’T BELONG HERE.”

Ronica Copes, 37, a resident of Lindenhurst in the town of Babylon, found the typewritten, all-capital-letter message in an addressed envelope in her mailbox on Thursday afternoon,she told Newsday.

“ATTN: AFRICAN-AMERICAN FAMILY,” begins the letter, which she later posted to Facebook. “THIS IS COMING FROM LINDENHURST COMMUNITY.”

“LINDENHURST IS 84% WHITE POPULATION. YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!!! PLEASE LEAVE LINDENHURST AS SOON AS YOU CAN. IT WILL BE BETTER FOR ALL OF US.”

“FIND THE TOWN WHERE THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE LIKE YOU,” the note ends, according to WCBS-TV. “SORRY IF THIS IS RUDE, BUT IT’S THE TRUTH.”

Suffolk County Police are investigating the correspondence as a possible hate crime, according to Newsday. Copes has lived in her house with her mother, her two siblings and five nieces and nephews since September 2013, but she told the publication that she hasn’t experienced any racism firsthand in the community.

Copes’ mother Darcell told WNBC-TV has jolted the family,

“I went from being fearful, protecting my family, to being totally confused, and wanted to know who and why,” the elder Copes told the TV station. “Today, it becomes even deeper: is it someone in the school district, is it the guy at the corner store, is it my neighbor down the street? Where?”

A dozen elected officials from Lindenhurst and Babylon, including Babylon Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer and Lindenhurst Village Mayor Tom Brennan, condemned the letter in a statement released on Friday afternoon.

“The best way to fight bias is with solidarity and we stand with all of our residents in declaring that there is no place for this type of intolerance and hatred in the Village of Lindenhurst, the Town of Babylon, or anywhere in our community,” the officials said in the statement. “We are, and always will be, a strong diverse community that does not cede ground to hostility, ignorance, or hatred, wherever it may appear.”

The younger Copes told the local newspaper that the family has no plans to leave the south shore Long Island town, which has a population of 27,000 that is just over 84% white and nearly 2% black, according to census figures.

“We feel a great deal of fear, but it subsided a little now because, I have to say, there has been a great outreach from a lot of people,” Copes said.

May 23, 2015

Do not thank me for my service because today is not about me at all.

That's what a number of fellow military veterans said, when I asked what they wanted people to know about Memorial Day.

"It's not about us," said Staff Sgt. Jay Arnold, a soldier with the Illinois Army National Guard. "It's about those who went before us."

While often seen as just a day off work or great time to barbeque, Memorial Day — not to be confused with Veterans Day — is a day of remembrance for approximately 1 million men and women who have died in defense of the United States since 1775.

"Memorial Day isn't about romanticizing war or worshiping military veterans. It's a day to recognize personal sacrifices of veterans and active military alike, regardless of their inclinations toward war," said Tech Sgt. Bill Monahan, an airman serving at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. "Too often today, ones political beliefs skew opinions on what constitutes honorable service so it is important to have a day where we can look back at who laid it all on the line."

The day has its roots in the Civil War, with a "Decoration Day" taking place three years after the war's end to decorate Union graves with flowers. Similar observances happened around the same time in the south. But it was Maj. Gen. John A. Logan who declared the day should be observed on May 30.

With an act of Congress in 1971, the day was proclaimed a national holiday for the last Monday in May and expanded to honor all who have died in American wars.

So you should definitely enjoy your day off, grill some steaks, and spend time with family and friends. But I challenge you — if you don't have any connection to the military; to really learn about just one fallen service member.

They didn't join the military for fame or reward, ambition or status. "In simple obedience to duty as they understood it," reads the inscription at Arlington's Confederate Memorial. "These men suffered all, sacrificed all, dared all — and died."

Former Army Maj. Matthew Burden, a military blogger who often shares stories of the fallen, shared this:

"It is important to remember them, and it is just as important to enjoy yourself this weekend. To spend time with your family and friends," he told BI. " What better assurance to them that they did not die in vain?  Enjoying your freedom and understanding it's value is the best way to honor the sacrifices of my friends.  That's the way they'd want you to spend Memorial Day.

Remembering them, and being a good friend, father, and an American is the best way that I can honor their memory."

I wholeheartedly agree.

May 7, 2015

Ivory Coast has banned skin-whitening creams because of health concerns, the health ministry says.

It says "cosmetic lightening and hygiene creams... that de-pigment the skin... are now forbidden".

Whitening creams have been popular for years among young women - and some men - across Africa, who believe they make them more beautiful.

But medical experts say they may cause cancer, diabetes, severe skin conditions and other diseases.

"The number of people with side-effects caused by these medicines is really high," Christian Doudouko, a member of Ivory Coast's pharmaceutical authority, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

British consultant dermatologist Justine Kluk told the BBC the major concern was over unregulated products, which may contain ingredients such as mercury or excessive amounts of steroids.

"If one thinks about steroids being present in these products, they're often present in much higher quantities than we would prescribe," she said.

She said the creams can cause a variety of health issues, such as "acne, thinning of the skin, glaucoma or cataracts if applied near the eyes".

"Or if applied liberally to the whole body, [they can] cause high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, weight gain, mood disturbance due to absorption of large amounts of steroids," she said.

However, analysts say the ban may not stop people buying the products.

They are still used in The Gambia despite a ban.

South Africa has the world's toughest laws against skin lighteners, having prohibited the most active ingredient - hydroquinone, but a University of Cape Town study found that more than a third of South African women still buy them.

The use of whitening creams in Africa is most widespread in Nigeria - where more than 75% of women buy them, according to a 2008 UN Environment Programme study.

May 7, 2015

A new high tech battle tank hailed by Russia as a "masterpiece" appeared to break down on Red Square on Thursday during a rehearsal for the military parade at which it will make its long-awaited debut.

The tank's driver raised a small red flag to show he had problems but managed to drive on about 30 minutes later after an attempt to tow it away was abandoned, a Reuters witness said.

The parade announcer later announced that the stoppage had been planned to demonstrate how military equipment could be evacuated from the battlefield, prompting laughter from the rehearsal audience.

It was an inauspicious start for the Armata T-14 which will roll across the square in front of President Vladimir Putin and foreign leaders as part of Saturday's parade, marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe.

The tanks boasts high-tech developments including automated loading, newly-developed armor and a remote-controlled gun turret operated by a three-man crew from a separate compartment at the front of the vehicle.

Part of a new generation of armored vehicles, the T-14 will not enter military service until 2020 and only a handful will appear at Saturday's parade. It is still in development and has yet to enter mass production.

But it will be the first new main battle tank deployed by Russia in 40 years, part of plans to produce 2,300 new tanks in the next five years under a costly rearmament program to replace ageing Soviet-era military vehicles.

"If we take the word of the Armata's designers and producers, this is a tremendous, unbelievable breakthrough in tank equipment," said Alexander Golts, defense columnist and deputy editor of online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal.

Igor Korotchenko, a member of the Defence Ministry's advisory Public Council, was quoted by RIA news agency as saying the tank was a "masterpiece of modern tank construction," unlike any other tank in the world.

It has a lot to live up to, and some doubters.

Despite the Armata's technological advances, Moscow-based defense analyst Ruslan Pukhov said claims by the Russian media that the tank is more than a match for its long-serving American and German-built competitors could be overblown.

"It is also very important who will operate this tank," said Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. "If it is to be one-year conscripts, I doubt that even such a fantastic machine could be a deadly weapon."

Another problem could be the cost. Russia plans to spend more than 20 trillion rubles ($400 billion) by 2020 on modernizing its armed forces.

At an estimated cost of 400 million rubles per tank, the Armata T-14's price tag could set back production, Golts said. Russia's economy is in crisis, hit by a fall in global oil prices and Western economic sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

"At 400 million rubles it is more expensive than a normal fighter jet," he said. "It looks as if this tank is made of gold."

May 7 2015

Slavery and legalized racial discrimination feel like such remote realities to us now, but there’s still something deeply unsettled between the white and black races that we can’t quite articulate. Ta-Nehisi Coates sheds some light on what that is:

“Now we have half-stepped away from our long centuries of despoilment, promising, ‘Never again.’ But still we are haunted. It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.”

Don’t we see that debt in Baltimore?

So many of us are asking: How do we make sense of such conflicting humanity? How do we manage the tension of racial despair? Does affirming the struggle for equality mean condoning the ancillary violence? Does condemning the looting discredit the underlying pain?

Facing dense social complexity, our tendency is to oversimplify and diminish. If we can discredit “the other side,” our position is strengthened and exempted from reform. If we refuse to hold the tension, we can opt out of empathy, nuance, critical thinking and ownership.

What do I know of oppression? I am a white girl from Texas who has had every advantage skewed my way. But, black community, I stand in solidarity with you, not just as a mom to two black children, but as a human being. I hear you, and I believe you.

Like most southerners, I am conditioned to minimize struggle and avoid conflict. (Of course, this is selective, as I am quite dramatic about my own struggle when it suits me.) MLK famously dubbed this a “negative peace,” as it is no indicator of actual societal peace, only an absence of confrontation;everyone just settle down and don’t make us uncomfortable. We whitewash 400 years of systematic oppression and then scold the black community for bearing its scars.

The majority culture is so incredibly removed from this psychological, economical, and physical subjugation, an empathy gap is inevitable. This is clear from the polarized reactions to Baltimore. While no sane person endorses violent looting and destruction (neither inside or outside the community), my social media feed included dozens of responses like this:

There is always a march against something. Don’t these people work? I guess not.

I suppose this will be justified because, well…we owe them? After all, they shoot a white person and we don’t riot. And they call us racist??

The ones doing this mess are just looking for an excuse to cause problems. The gang bangers working together to take out police officers who are trying to protect property and people.

They aren’t protesting and they have no grief. These animals are rioting and looting for purely selfish reasons.

While these comments confirm the immense labor still ahead, perhaps transparent responses like this one offer guidance on next steps:

I think I struggle to understand the need to destroy. I guess I just usually don’t feel that way myself. I find it very hard to just step back and accept this as hurt. Or is this the residual affects of long time hurt that we are seeing now?

To make sense of disturbing, confusing rioting in one’s own backyard, whites must try to understand the very real generational trauma the black community has endured. Judy Wu Dominick describes the Korean word used to represent a visceral reaction to unbearable psychological pain: han.

“Han is the inexpressibly entangled experience of pain and bitterness imposed by the injustice of oppressors. When grief surpasses its sensibility line, it becomes a void. This void is not a mere hollowness, but an abyss filled with agony. When the oppressed undergo suffering over several generations without release, they develop collective unconscious han and transmit it to their posterity. In such an atmosphere, a single incident can trigger an explosive outburst of the multiple-generations-worth of pent-up thirst for revenge, a visceral release of collective agony in the form of rioting, looting, and aimless destruction.”

While the black community polices their own rioters alongside law enforcement, perhaps rather than more white scolding, we could acknowledge the depth of pain exploding within Baltimore, Ferguson and the collective cry rising all over the country. Do we have the courage to look beyond the symptoms to the devastating source? This will take monumental humility, acknowledgement and repentance from the white community, because we cannot pretend almost 400 years of terror and state-sanctioned disadvantages were erased and mended 50 years ago.

If we condemn the Baltimore mob, we must first condemn the lynching mob.

And as my friend Corregan Brown cautioned: “We have to be wary of false equivalence. Generations of systemic injustice is not equivalent to destruction of a city block. That doesn’t make the latter right, but holding the two truths in tension must never be mistaken for holding them in balance.”

I obviously cannot speak for the black community or even the collective white community (as we are sharply divided over this, too), but I can speak for myself. So here is my message to my black friends, neighbors, mentors, and colleagues:

I suspect you and I watched the riots, albeit a tiny percentage of Baltimore natives and a fraction of those peacefully assembled, and we both grieved. We know violence only begets violence, and destroying property and vandalizing a neighborhood is only going to set progress back.

We also know the cynical will throw a blanket statement over the entire city and discredit the fault lines of injustice that gave way that day. I bet we both wept as 8-year-old boys threw rocks at the police. Not another generation, God. How long?

But I hope you can hear me say this: I am not blind to the systems that delivered me to the doorstep of privilege while you were relegated to the back door. I will not sanitize the abuse and injustice that built our entire infrastructure on human misery. I won’t imagine the plight of the modern black community was born in a vacuum, as if centuries of physical, financial, occupational, and social harm bear no marks.

I simply want you to know that one white, upper middle class, suburban woman hears and believes you. I do not share your collective han, but I am grieved immeasurably by it, and I am committed to racial reconciliation and reparations in my lifetime.

There is so much work to do: relational healing, power upheaval, systemic reform from the top down and bottom up, the laborious process of education, the laborious process of intellectual honesty, the laborious process of peacemaking. But I hope we can face this work together, and on the days you are weary beyond words, remember that we exist – a whole alliance of white folks who have heard your stories and heeded your leadership, who’ve been inspired by your resilience and broken over your pain. We stand by you as co-laborers, neighbors, and mostly your friends. Together we can lessen the burden on our children’s generation until one day, through toil and courage and perseverance and unity, this good work is complete.

May 7, 2015

The man accused of abducting and killing University of Virginia sophomore Hannah Graham last fall will now face a charge of capital murder in the case, meaning that if he is convicted he could face the death penalty.

Jesse L. Matthew Jr., 33, had been charged with first-degree murder in Graham’s slaying, and the charges were upgraded at a court hearing in this college town on Tuesday. Homicides in Virginia can be charged as capital murders when there are allegations of aggravating factors, including abduction or sexual assault.

Graham, 18, of Fairfax County, Va., went missing in September from an outdoor mall near the U-Va. campus, and Matthew was the last person seen with her. Her body was found in a wooded area about 10 miles from campus weeks later, and Matthew was charged with her killing.

Authorities have alleged that Matthew abducted Graham “with intent to defile,” indicating that police believe he intended to sexually assault Graham.

Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford initially did not seek a capital murder charge, saying she made that decision after consulting with Graham’s family and weighing the impact on the community.

Matthew also is facing charges related to a sexual assault from nearly a decade ago. He is awaiting trial on charges that he attacked and attempted to kill a woman in Fairfax City in 2005; authorities have said that they found Matthew’s DNA under one of the victim’s fingernails.

Graham, a U-Va. sophomore who graduated from West Potomac High School, disappeared after a night out in Charlottesville on Sept. 12. Police said she had been socializing with friends earlier in the night but left the group with plans to meet up with them later. She never showed up and apparently became disoriented while walking through Charlottesville.

Police said witnesses saw Matthew with his arm around Graham at a downtown mall about 1 a.m. Sept. 13, and surveillance video recordings show the two walking together. Witnesses also saw the two together outside a restaurant, the last reported sighting of Graham.

May 7, 2015

The federal government is spending at least $294 billion of taxpayer money this year on hundreds of expired programs, according to a report released Thursday.

The 19-page “America’s Most Wasted” report is the first in a series of oversight studies from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) meant to highlight examples of wasteful and duplicative government spending.

McCain identified $1.1 billion in wasteful spending on projects that included an Army research study into the bomb-detecting abilities of elephants, puppet shows in Vermont and the creation of a dog bite prevention website, among others.

The $294 billion that is being spent on expired programs stems from a report the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released in January. Last year, the government spent $302 billion on unauthorized projects.

“I believe the 'America’s Most Wasted' reports should serve as a wake-up call to Congress and the American people keep their government accountable by demanding an end to wasteful government spending,” McCain said in a statement.

The report found that the Army is spending $50,000 to research whether elephants in South Africa can detect bombs.

It also found that the Social Security Administration has issued more than $225 million in overpayments to more than 106,000 students. Children with a deceased, retired or disabled parent have access to these benefits until they graduate or turn 19. McCain’s report said $2.5 billion in benefits is provided to 4.4 million children nationwide each month.

The National Guard has spent $49 million on advertising deals with professional sports leagues to support recruiting, the report found.

The government is also spending $14 million on a program at the Department of Agriculture to develop a catfish inspection office even though the Food and Drug Administration already has one.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the report said, awarded a grant worth nearly $391,000 to a university to develop a website to teach children about dog bites.

Another $15,000 grant issued by the Environmental Protection Agency was given to a university to study pollution that emanates from backyard barbeques, the report said.

Future reports in the “America’s Most Wasted” series will highlight wasteful spending at the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and federal wildfire management, McCain said.

McCain said the reports piggyback on the annual wasteful spending reports former Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) compiled while he served in Congress.

May 7, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fighting words on immigration this week, designed in part to provoke Republicans into a reactionary counterattack, instead drew an unusual early response from most of the top-tier GOP presidential candidates: silence.

Two days after Clinton vowed to expand on President Obama’s executive actions to shield up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was the only leading Republican 2016 contender to forcefully strike back, calling it a “full embrace of amnesty” that is “unfair to hard-working Americans.”

By contrast, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie did not weigh in publicly on Clinton’s remarks, made Tuesday during her campaign stop in Las Vegas. A spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), one of Obama’s most vocal critics on immigration, said Clinton had “doubled down on amnesty and lawlessness,” but the senator himself did not speak on the issue.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee told MSNBC that Clinton was wrong, saying the country needs to focus on border security first.

The relatively subdued GOP reaction illustrated a dilemma for a Republican Party still wrestling with the hot-button issue of immigration four years after Obama routed Mitt Romney behind overwhelming support from Latinos and Asian Americans.

Though virtually all of the Republican hopefuls have denounced Obama’s executive actions, which are wildly unpopular with the GOP’s conservative base, they also recognize that staking out a hard-line immigration position would be likely to harm their status with two of the fastest-growing subsets of the electorate. In 2012, Romney advocated “self-deportation” for illegal immigrants, earning him scorn from Latino groups.

“The waters are treacherous, which explains the muted response,” said William J. Bennett, education secretary under President Ronald Reagan and now a talk-radio host. “Not one of the campaigns, with the exception of Jeb Bush, have full clarity on where they want to go, and people are doing a lot of moving.”

Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the Republican Party in New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation primary, was even blunter, blaming his compatriots with failing to put the issue of immigration reform behind them. House Republicans last summer refused to vote on a bipartisan border control bill, approved by the Senate, that included a 13-year path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

“Republicans’ intransigence has created an obvious opportunity for Hillary to rip off our arms and beat us with the bloody ends,” Cullen said. “She’s expertly exploiting our party’s internal problems.”

Last year, Obama delayed his executive actions until after the midterm elections at the behest of jittery Senate Democrats, only to see the party lose control of the upper chamber anyway. Now, Clinton’s enthusiastic embrace of Obama’s immigration actions so early in the election cycle has been a clear sign that Democrats, once wary of an issue former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has called the “third rail of American politics,” may believe immigration is a golden ticket to electoral-college success.

During her appearance in Las Vegas — where a growing Latino population helped power Obama to a 2012 victory in Nevada — Clinton again backed a path to citizenship, adding that she would potentially go further than the president to protect immigrants from deportation until Congress reforms border control laws. She goaded Republicans, saying they are supporting “second-class status” for illegal immigrants.

Her pitch to the left was so emphatic that White House aides, who had said Obama’s executive actions in November represented the limit of his legal authority, were forced to defend the president Wednesday for not going further.

“The president’s views have not changed,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said during his daily briefing when asked whether Obama believed he could do more in light of Clinton’s announcement. Asked whether her pledge to expand the deportation relief would hold up legally, Earnest added, “That’s something for a future president and future courts to decide.”

Public polling has shown split views on Obama’s immigration actions. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll in January, 41 percent said the actions should go forward and 56 percent said they should be blocked. But support among Hispanics for the president’s initiatives was 80 percent, compared with just 28 percent among whites.

Other polls have showed higher levels of overall support for allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the country and work and to eventually apply for citizenship.

That has presented difficulties for Republican contenders who have struggled to articulate a clear vision on immigration reform.

“One of the biggest challenges we’ve had with Hispanic voters is that we’re defined by what we’re against rather than what we’re for,” said Kevin Madden, a former Romney adviser. “We created a lot of problems for ourselves in 2012 when we had an immigration platform that was defined by ‘self-deportation’ and expected to win support from Hispanic voters.”

Bush, who is the former governor of a state with a large Hispanic population and whose wife is Mexican American, has advocated a path to legal status for the undocumented, but he has pledged to overturn Obama’s executive actions.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, helped negotiate the Senate’s immigration bill last year but backed away after House conservatives killed it. And Walker has said his views on immigration have changed since he previously voiced support for a citizenship plan.

In a statement, Walker said Wednesday that Clinton’s position “is unfair to hardworking Americans and all immigrants who followed the law to achieve the rights and privileges afforded to U.S. citizens. And by supporting the president’s lawless executive action, Hillary Clinton once again believes she’s above the law.”

Immigration advocates have delighted in Clinton’s proactive move, noting that it was perhaps most vexing for Bush, who has sought to position himself as slightly more moderate among the GOP field on immigration.

“He has been going on two years of going back and forth on the question of citizenship: What’s doable? What’s viable in his party?” said Marshall Fitz, vice president of immigration policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “But he hasn’t formally stuck to his guns on what is the right thing to do, and she called him out on it.”

Republican political strategists, trying to look for an upside, suggested that as Clinton shifts to the left, her candidacy risks seeming emblematic of a third Obama term.

“She’s boxing them in a little, but she’s also linking herself more significantly to Obama,” said Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican consultant. “If his approval ratings are above 50 percent next year, it’s smart. If they’re below 50 percent, she won’t do well.”

May 7, 2015

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday the National Security Agency’s controversial collection of millions of Americans’ phone records isn’t authorized by the Patriot Act, as the Bush and Obama administrations have long maintained.

The NSA has used the Patriot Act to justify collecting records of nearly every call made in the U.S. and entering them into a database to search for possible contacts among terrorism suspects.

The scope of the program was revealed when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents describing the program, triggering a national debate over the extent of the data collection.

The ruling by the three-judge panel in New York comes at a delicate point in the national debate over government surveillance, as Section 215 of the Patriot Act is due to expire next month and lawmakers are haggling about whether to renew it, modify it, or let it lapse.

The court’s ruling was in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union arguing the data collection should be stopped because it violates Americans’ privacy rights. A lower court judge ruled the program was constitutional, and the civil liberties group appealed, leading to Thursday’s decision.

”The text of (Section 215) cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and...does not authorize the telephone metadata program,’’ the court wrote.

The court declined to address the issue of whether the program violates Americans’ rights, because, they found, it was never properly authorized by existing law.

The judges didn't order the collection to stop, noting that the legislative debate and the looming expiration of Section 215 will force action on the issue one way or another. The judges also note that if Congress decides to approve some version of the phone data collection program in coming days, then the privacy issue could be revisited in court.

The panel sent the case back to the lower court judge for further review based on the appeals court findings.

The legal fight will continue and the U.S. can appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the expiration of Section 215 on June 1 essentially puts the fate of the program in the hands of Congress in the short-term.

It is unclear what the appellate court ruling will mean for Congress, which has been scrambling in recent days to decide what to do with Section 215.

The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill 25-2 last week that would end the bulk collection of telephone and email records under Section 215, instead requiring the government to obtain the records on a case-by-case basis. The White House has signaled support for the measure.

But a number of Senate Republicans have expressed reservations with the curbs, saying it could threaten national security. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has suggested there isn’t enough time left in the congressional schedule to debate a way to replace Section 215 before it expires, and he said several days ago that he is likely to pursue a temporary extension of the program with no changes.

It is unclear if such a measure would pass the House or the Senate, in part because of broad opposition to the program.

Recently retired NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander last week acknowledged that some of the agency’s practices were controversial but he said he worried ending certain programs because of a public backlash could be dangerous.

“I am concerned if we throw out some of these programs, now we are at risk,” he said at an event hosted by the Aspen Institute. “We’re stupid, I got it, in the press, but we shouldn’t put American people at risk.”

The court’s 97-page decision is the most significant legal ruling on the program, begun in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks. The program was put under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2006 as the Bush administration sought to give it firmer legal footing.

The ruling, while ducking the privacy concerns raised by the ACLU, also cast aside a basic legal premise upon which the NSA’s phone records collection—as well as its collection of other records—is based.

For years, government lawyers have maintained they are allowed to collect bulk data because, while such records aren’t connected to any terror suspects, they could need to search through those records later to find connections between suspects.

This argument—that bulk records are inherently relevant to terrorism probes —has been a central premise of the NSA.

“Such an expansive concept of ‘relevance’ is unprecedented and unwarranted,’’ the judges wrote.

Privacy groups continued to try to learn more about the collection and stop it, but their efforts were largely frustrated until Mr. Snowden released documents detailing it and other intelligence collection programs.

Those details gave new momentum to privacy advocates, and some lawmakers, including those who helped write the Patriot Act, insisted they’d never meant to authorize bulk spying on innocent Americans.

May 7, 2015

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is coming under scrutiny from social conservatives for investing taxpayer money in a company with ties to pornography.

The former Florida governor invested $1.3 million from the state’s pension fund into Movie Gallery, a film rental company that offers X-rated films in addition to comedies and action movies, according to a report in the International Business Times.

The report examined thousands of emails from during his tenure that show a strained relationship between Bush and the “religious right."

One voter wrote Bush was supporting a company that was “enslaving men and women to its addiction."

American Family Association founder Donald Wildmon, in particular, took offense to Bush’s ties to pornography. He wrote a mass email rallying social conservatives against Bush.

“Movie Gallery shades hundreds of its stores with ‘back rooms,’ filled with thousands of videos and magazines exhibiting morbid depictions of sex,” Wildmon reportedly said in the email. “By investing in Movie Gallery stock, the state of Florida is giving its stamp of approval on hard-core porn. Tell the Florida Board of Administration to get out of the porn business by divesting itself of Movie Gallery stock.”

Initially, Bush did not back down amid pressure, allegedly maintaining that he had to make the most profitable investment choice for taxpayers.

But the state sold the shares in 2006 after Movie Gallery’s stock performance began to slip.

The revelations came from 280,000 emails recently released from Bush's time as governor.

May 1, 2015

Most people are familiar with Tesla as a start-up company that builds flashy — if expensive — electric vehicles.

But it turns out Tesla CEO Elon Musk has much bigger aims than just building cool cars. He wants to makebatteries a core part of Tesla's business, with the modest aim of revamping the nation's electricity system.

Here's the basic idea: Batteries are already a key component of Tesla's electric vehicles, accounting for a big portion of the price tag. But they could potentially have much broader applications. Batteries could help homes and utilities make better use of solar power: charging up when the sun is shining and saving power for later. They could bring electricity to areas that aren't connected to the grid. Or protect against outages. At least, that's the theory.

"Our goal," Musk told reporters at a press conference on Thursday, "is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy."

Musk was unveiling a new lithium-ion battery that people could buy for their homes, called the Powerwall. You can pay $3,000 for a 7 kilowatt hour (kWh) batter or $3,500 for a 10 kilowatt hour battery that you can affix to your wall. People could buy multiple batteries and stack them together. There are also going to be industrial versions for businesses and utilities operating the electric grid.

"The issue with existing batteries is that they suck," Musk said. "They are expensive, unreliable and bad in every way." Tesla wants to change that by pushing down battery prices — making use of its new GigaFactory in Nevada — and allowing people to stack batteries together for broader applications.

This all raises some big questions: Why would anyone want to buy these batteries? And are they really as transformational as Musk claims?

Batteries could boost rooftop solar — though most people won't go "off grid"

Let's start with homeowners, since that was the focus of Tesla's press conference.

Imagine that you've installed solar panels on your roof — as it happens, Musk alsoowns SolarCity, the largest installer of rooftop solar panels in the United States. A storage system could allow you to charge up batteries during the day, when the sun is shining, with excess electricity you don't need. You could then draw down that electricity at night, when you need it.

Musk said that there are already about 300 homes in California with this sort of battery backup — in the event of a blackout, these homes can tap into their batteries to keep the power flowing. Musk added that SolarCity would offer battery backup with all installations within the next 10 years.

Backup storage is a nice feature, but not exactly transformational. So what else might battery storage do?

Well, more radically, battery systems could allow homes to go completely "off the grid" — so that they're not reliant at all on their local utility for electricity.

This "off-grid" possibility has gotten a lot of coverage, but it's a little overhyped. For most people, going completely off the grid won't make sense, unless you have some strong personal desires to do so. Right now, in most states, if you install solar panels on your roofs, you can simply sell the excess electricity generated during the day back to the grid. This is still easier and much, much cheaper than buying up a bunch of $3,000 batteries.

But here's where things get interesting. In many states, utilities have been pushing to change the laws that require them to buy back electricity from solar homes — after all, too much rooftop solar cuts into their business. In Hawaii, for instance, utilities have put limits on how much solar electricity they'll buy from households, saying that it's putting an undue strain on the grid.

Batteries could begin to alter this dynamic. Interestingly, SolarCity will start offering "off-grid" systems first to customers in Hawaii who "might otherwise be prevented from using solar power." The expansion of rooftop solar power is in limited by utilities' willingness to accommodate these systems. With batteries, there's no such limit. This is something to watch going forward.

A bigger deal: Energy storage could help utilities use more renewable power

To really understand the impact of cheaper energy storage, however, we may need to look beyond homes with solar panels. One huge potential application of batteries (or other storage devices) is that they could help electric utilities harness more wind and solar power.

Without storage, utilities can use electricity from wind turbines when the wind is actually blowing and they can only make use of electricity from solar panels when the sun is shining. If it's dark or calm, they need to turn to fossil fuels. And juggling these sources can be difficult. That's a real limit on the expansion of wind and solar (which currently provide just 4.4 percent and 0.4 percent of US electricity).

Storage can change that and help expand the use of these sources. For example, solar panels are often producing the most electricity during the day, when the sun is at its peak. But people are often using the most electricity during the evening, when they come home from work and turn on all their appliances. Storage could help better match supply and demand.

What's more, the use of batteries or other storage can improve the reliability of the grid — utilities can more precisely deploy electricity when its needed and even handle blackouts better. (For more on how storage could revolutionize the grid, check out this Department of Energy report from 2013.)

This isn't theoretical. Already, a variety of utilities around the country are planning to spend billions of dollars on energy storage. That said, Tesla won't necessarily dominate this market, since there are a wide variety of storage options out there besides batteries — pumped hydro, compressed air energy storage, flywheels, electrochemical capacitors. If Tesla can drive down battery costs, that will help expand the options available. But there's no guarantee they'll be at the forefront of this transformation.

What's more, this is only looking at the near future. If energy storage continues to get cheaper, people are likely to find more uses for it — as David Roberts points out , solar power could be paired with wireless charging to completely transform our urban infrastructure. We're likely only just beginning to find uses for storage.

Batteries could help bring power to remote communities

Meanwhile, even if it doesn't make sense for some homes to go off-grid, it may make sense for some large businesses or communities to do so — at least in part. And here's where Tesla wants to get involved.

SolarCity and Tesla are planning to offer a "microgrid" system called GridLogic to communities that are susceptible to outages or high energy costs — like island communities, hospitals, or military bases. This system will combine solar energy, batteries, and load control to provide dependable power, even when the grid is down. Crucially, "GridLogic can operate either in conjunction with or independently of the utility grid."

The big question: Will battery costs keep falling?

Of course, for batteries to have a truly massive impact on the energy system, they'll need to keep getting cheaper. And it's still an open question how far prices can fall.

For an optimistic take on the price question, see this post by Ramez Naam. He notes that energy storage costs have been falling for 20 years — including costs for lithium-ion batteries. And, as batteries become more widespread and the market expands, it's reasonable to expect the price to keep dropping.

Not only will that allow utility and home energy storage to become more widespread, but it would allow the price of electric vehicles to come down (the battery is usually a significant chunk of the cost of an electric car). Check out this recent study in Nature Climate Changeon the declining cost of electric vehicle battery costs since 2005: ( Nykvist and Nilsson, 2015) 

The more pessimistic view, meanwhile, is that battery prices can't keep dropping indefinitely. In 2013, Fred Schlacter wrote an essay on why batteries are fundamentally different from things like mobile phones or computers and we shouldn't necessarily expect prices to fall in the same manner.

"Batteries are not like [mobile phones or computers]," he wrote. "Ions, which transfer charge in batteries, are large, and they take up space, as do anodes, cathodes, and electrolytes. A D-cell battery stores more energy than an AA-cell. Potentials in a battery are dictated by the relevant chemical reactions, thus limiting eventual battery performance. Significant improvement in battery capacity can only be made by changing to a different chemistry."

This question will go a long way toward determining whether batteries can revolutionize our energy system or not.

May 1, 2015

In an updated support document, Apple has acknowledged what some new Apple Watch owners quickly discovered over the last week: The Watch may not work properly for people with tattoos.

The Watch's heart-rate monitor works by shining infrared or green light through the skin, but tattoos can interfere with that and prevent the Watch from getting a reading.

"Permanent or temporary changes to your skin, such as some tattoos, can also impact heart-rate sensor performance," Apple writes. "The ink, pattern, and saturation of some tattoos can block light from the sensor, making it difficult to get reliable readings."

Apple's description is vague about what type of tattoos will and won't pose a problem, perhaps because it doesn't precisely know.

What's been widely suggested is that darker tattoos are the ones causing issues, preventing too much of the Watch's light from getting through.

This isn't just a problem related to reading heart rates. Apple also uses those sensors to detect when the Watch has been removed from a person's wrist — if the Watch doesn't think it's being worn, it won't receive notifications; it can also cause the Watch to lock if a passcode is enabled.

There are workarounds for anyone running into this problem, but they remove some of the conveniences and security that are supposed to be built in.

May 1, 2015

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un cancelled his planned visit to Russia to attend the country’s World War II anniversary celebrations on May 9 because Moscow refused to comply with Pyongyang's request to provide him with “special treatment,” a South Korean newspaper reported on Friday.

A spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced Thursday, citing “diplomatic channels” that the North Korean leader would not come to Russia due to some “internal North Korean issues.” While the spokesperson did not provide further details, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that Kim cancelled his Russia visit after Moscow denied to give him special treatment over several other foreign dignitaries at the event.

“Without top-grade security, Kim would inevitably have become a freak show for the global press,” the Chosun Ilbo report said, adding that Kim Yong Nam, the state's nominal head and chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea, is likely to visit Moscow on Kim’s behalf.

While some analysts believe that Kim decided to snub Russia fearing that being treated on an equal footing with other world leaders would damage his reputation at home, there is also speculation that the young North Korean dictator may have been reluctant to upset China by holding talks with Putin before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, The Telegraph reported.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had announced earlier this year that Kim was expected to accept the Kremlin’s invitation to visit Russia in May, making his first foreign visit since taking power from his late father, Kim Jong Il, in 2011.

Meanwhile, an official in South Korea’s Defense Ministry said that there are no “abnormal signs” in North Korea that might have caused its leader to cancel his planned trip to Russia.

“We don't believe that any notable internal affairs are taking place in North Korea (that are) serious enough to cause Kim not to attend the event,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agencyquoted the official as saying. “It would be a heavy burden for the young, inexperienced leader to attend a major public event involving many other leaders from around the world.”

Russia has invited 68 foreign dignitaries, including leaders of international organizations, to attend next week’s event. However, only about a third of them are expected to participate, Agence France-Presse reported.

May 1, 2015

Manny Pacquiao has been an inspiration for millions of Filipinos not just as a boxer, but as a philanthropist. As a politician, not so much.

The country's biggest individual taxpayer in 2013, Pacquiao has often shared his wealth with the poor in his home province of Sarangani, where he has been elected and re-elected to Congress on waves of adoration. Win or lose in his May 2 megafight with Floyd Mayweather, Pacquiao is a lock to keep his seat for a third and final term, unless he decides to run for another office such as senator.

But some are disappointed with Pacquiao's political record. After nearly six years in office, he has yet to get a single bill through committee. Last year, he was present in Congress for just four days.

While Pacquiao was absent mostly to train, public administration professor Prospero de Vera said he was denying his constituents representation.

Pacquiao "has a problem understanding what representation means," said de Vera, who has served as consultant to other legislators. "What is worrisome is that he doesn't seem to be bothered by it."

Pacquiao's financial help is often sought and given in Sarangani, one of the Philippines' poorer provinces, with a poverty rate of over 45 percent.

Rosario Mantua, a former councilor of Maasim township, said Pacquiao and his wife, Jinkee, the provincial vice governor, have donated fishing boats, water buffaloes to plow fields with, home lots and funds for college scholarships.

The high school dropout's scholarships have helped hundreds of students who would never have gone to college without a financial sponsor, said Apolo Novicio, executive assistant to the Maasim mayor.

Pacquiao's doling out of benefits, even from his own pocket, strikes some critics as too similar to how Filipino politicians typically operate, especially since he has few other political accomplishments.

"When you speak of the patronage system, it seems that he has strongly embraced it," said political analyst Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute of Political and Electoral Reforms. He said Pacquiao keeps to the mold of the typical traditional politician, derisively called "trapo", the Filipino word for rag.

Casiple said that lacking any political strategy or world view, Pacquiao could fall prey to "people around him who are not only 'trapo' but also opportunists, who will take advantage of his name and his money."

Pacquiao has filed about a dozen bills as congressman but none has passed any of the committees they have been referred to, the first hurdle in the legislative mill. The bills include several pertaining to boxing and sports development and health, including one to build a provincial hospital.

Congressional records show that during his first term in 2010-2013, Pacquiao was "actually present" for 98 out of 168 session days, and only for four days last year. Congress is currently out of session, Pacquiao has been training for weeks and calls to his office rang unanswered.

Rep. Ben Evardone, a former provincial governor and member of the administration Liberal Party, defends Pacquiao's absences in Congress, saying "being in Congress, making noise" is not as important as delivering public services.

"What is important is you bring home the bacon, as they say," he said, referring to the number of school houses, irrigation canals and roads that people expect to be built in their district with their congressman's help. "The fact that he is bringing glory to our country, he is able to unify, he is putting our country on the map, overshadows everything, his shortcomings."

Pacquiao was praised for a 2010 speech supporting an anti-human trafficking law. But during a heated debate months later over the reproductive health bill that backs artificial contraception, he fumbled. He raised questions that had been asked and answered, and challenged provisions that had already been removed or amended in previous sessions when he was absent.

His missteps have not discouraged some from thinking he has what it takes to achieve higher office one day — perhaps even president. Political scientist Amado Mendoza views him as a "more authentic pro-poor" public servant than other prominent politicians.

"He would not be an eight-time champion if he wasn't wise," Mendoza said. "War is war, it just takes on different forms. Politics is war, boxing is war. It is easy to shift ... from one form of warfare to another form of warfare."

Roulette de Leon, a former city planning staff member and consultant on community development and management, said he supported Pacquiao's first and unsuccessful foray into politics in the 2007 congressional election in General Santos city, where Pacquiao began his boxing career.

He has since become frustrated over his performance in the House of Representatives and suggested that Pacquiao hold off any immediate plans to run for a national office like senator next year or president in 2022, when 36-year-old boxing hero reaches the age required for the presidency.

Pacquiao should "first understand the job of a congressman before he understands the work of a senator, before he studies the responsibilities of a president," de Leon said.

De Vera, the professor, said if Pacquiao intends to provide direct assistance to his constituents, he should run for a local government position such as mayor or governor because providing public service, though important, is not the main responsibility of a legislator.

Mayor Raul Martinez of Kiamba, who stood as wedding godfather for the Pacquiao couple, also thinks Pacquiao would be a good local executive. He has told the "fighting congressman" to make good on his commitment to develop Sarangani province and that the best way to do that is to serve as governor. But he suggests that should wait until he retires from boxing.

"'You have to be a governor, full time,'" Martinez said he told Pacquiao. "'You cannot serve two masters.' He just laughed."

May 1, 2015

One day in early February, the black flag of the Islamic State appeared on the roof of a dilapidated home in Gornja Maoca, an isolated hamlet in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The flag was gone when the police arrived, and whoever hoisted it was never found. But the episode reaffirmed to Bosnian officials and Western intelligence agencies that the settlement, peopled by followers of Saudi Arabia's puritanical brand of Islam, known as Wahhabism, has ties to the networks that have recruited hundreds of Muslim men from across the Balkans to fight in Syria and Iraq.

"It is fair to say that it (Gorjna Maoca) is perhaps the biggest center of extremism in Bosnia," said a Western intelligence official. He spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss sensitive information with a journalist. While the region hasn't seen the kinds of mass terrorist attacks that have shocked France, they wouldn't be a surprise, the official said: "We've seen aspirational plotting."

Most of the men who've left the Balkans to fight in the Middle East come from Bosnia and Kosovo, parts of former Yugoslavia whose independence was secured by U.S.-led military interventions in the 1990s. Nearly half of Bosnia's 3.8 million people are Muslim. Kosovo, whose 1.8 million population is 95 percent Muslim, arguably is Europe's most pro-American country. A statue and massive portrait of former President Bill Clinton overlook a thoroughfare named after him in the capital, Pristina, where there's also a street named for George W. Bush and a boutique named for Hillary Clinton.

Since the wars, the United States and its European partners have spent billions of dollars and years of diplomacy trying to help build the two nations into stable democracies. Yet both countries are mired in dysfunctional governance, pervasive corruption, ethnic divisions and poverty-fueled despair, conditions that have boosted the appeal of hard-line Islam, the seeds of which were planted, ironically, with the help of some of America's closest Arab allies.

And even as Balkan men fight in Syria and Iraq, mostly with the Islamic State, fundamentalists at home are intensifying attacks on the legitimacy of the liberal version of Islam that's evolved in the Balkans over centuries. The result is mounting fears that the assault on traditional Islam will intensify, fueling insecurity, and that Bosnia and Kosovo could become pathways to the West for deeply radicalized jihadis.

"For these conservative radical groups, their first purpose is to take over the Muslim community of Kosovo," said Ramadan Ilazi, the country's deputy minister for European integration and an expert on political Islam. "It's a real challenge."

Even if they don't indulge themselves, most Balkan Muslims tolerate drinking and smoking. They eschew Islamic-style beards and veils and rarely — if ever — attend mosque. They freely mix with the opposite sex and members of other faiths, and marry non-Muslims.

Some traditional clerics who've spoken out against extremism have been harassed, assaulted and forced out of their mosques. They've had their sermons disrupted and have been denounced as infidels on videos and radical websites that condemn traditional Islam as apostasy.

On Monday in Bosnia, an alleged Islamist extremist died in an attack on a police station that killed a Bosnian Serb officer. In November in Kosovo, two American women serving as Mormon missionaries were assaulted by suspected extremists, two of whom were later charged, along with five others, with plotting terrorist attacks. An expatriate Kosovar was convicted of raking a bus with gunfire in 2011 at Frankfurt Airport, killing two U.S. soldiers, Germany's first fatal attack by an Islamist. In 2013, a Bosnian court convicted a Wahhabi of planting a bomb that killed a Bosnian Croat police officer.

Reporters who've investigated Islamist groups and the recruitment of fighters, and politicians who've sounded alarms about creeping fundamentalism, have received death threats.

"Anyone who is not like them is (considered) a nonbeliever," said Alma Lama, a Kosovo Assembly member who's sought police protection for herself and her family because of "thousands" of threats triggered by her denunciations of hard-line Islam and its denial of women's rights. "These guys are inciting hatred between religious groups and gender hatred."

"The radicals are threats to us traditional Muslims, not to Serbs and not to Croats," said Shaykh Edin Kukavica, a Bosnian cleric of Islam's mystical Sufi branch who recently received a text message warning him that "the arrow is on its way."

While the number of hard-line Islamists in both countries is very small, officials agree that just a few who acquire combat skills in the Middle East is too many.

"Even if only one person had gone, it would be a problem, and we are taking this problem very seriously," said Amir Veiz, the director of counterterrorism for the State Investigation and Protection Agency, the Bosnian state police.

Both countries have stepped up crackdowns on extremists, officials say, and are coordinating closely with U.S. and European intelligence agencies to throttle the flow of men and women to Iraq and Syria, where as many as 160 Bosnians and some 300 Kosovars, some with their families, are said to be fighting. A few joined the Nusra Front, al-Qaida's Syrian wing, but the bulk enlisted with the Islamic State.

Still, Kosovo, with its small population, remains the largest per-capita European contributor of fighters to the Islamic State, and some experts say both governments initially minimized the problem to cover up their failures to act earlier and to avoid alienating powerful religious conservatives.

"I had information that 150 to 200 people were fighting, but the government said there were only 10," said Vehbi Kajtazi, a journalist at Kosovo's main independent newspaper, Koha Ditore, who charged that he was pressured to stop writing about the issue. "The government was trying to suppress this, but they couldn't because the problem is a big issue for Kosovo."

"We are already a bit late, I think, and this is why this is an emergency situation in terms of the need for a response, a response that is comprehensive economically speaking, socially, politically," said Ilazi, Kosovo's deputy minister for European integration.

Hard-line Islam was carried to the Balkans by hundreds of mostly Arab foreign fighters who helped Bosnia's Muslim-led government, hamstrung by a U.N. arms embargo, resist the country's dismemberment by Serbia and Croatia in a war that lasted from 1992 to 1995. A much smaller number joined the ethnic Albanian rebels who fought for Kosovo's independence from Serbia.

The foreigners — many of whom later are thought to have joined al-Qaida — were Takfiris, radicals who embrace violence in rejecting secular politics, culture and other faiths, and seek to return to the "pure" Islamic rule that they believe was founded by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh-century Arabian Peninsula.

They were backed by funds from Saudi Arabia and other U.S. Arab allies, and their proselytizing was reinforced by a flood of Islamist charities offering money, food and educational training in return for devotion to their hard-line practices.

Virtually all the foreigners eventually left — a few married Bosnian women — but the charities stayed. Flush with cash in struggling, war-damaged societies, they won devotees by expanding aid programs, rebuilding mosques and constructing new ones, supported by officials who welcomed the money and the patronage of powerful Muslim countries, experts said.

The charities "found a fertile place here," said Denis Hadzovic, the head of the Center for Strategic Studies, a Sarajevo policy institute. "They began to be more aggressive in their behavior and their efforts to promote another approach to Islam."

While the Bosnian and Kosovar governments shuttered more than a dozen Islamist charities during crackdowns last year, the organizations' influence is widely apparent.

Skullcapped men wearing Islamic-style beards and Arabic dress now are a common sight in the villages and cities of Kosovo and Bosnia, where their baggy, calf-length trousers are derided as "floodwater pants." Young local clerics trained in fundamentalist seminaries in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries are running mosques.

Stores selling Islamic women's garb — including veils and head-to-toe coverings — religious texts and videos, halal food and other Arabic goods are clustered around Pristina's Ottoman-era mosques, sharing streets with Western-style boutiques and bars offering martinis and mojitos.

In Sarajevo, Bosnia's capital, sidewalk vendors hawk the same wares outside the Saudi-built King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud Cultural Center, the largest of its kind in the Balkans.

The center — with its Saudi-style mosque — is run by Saudis with diplomatic status, adding to the discomfort of many Sarajevans unnerved by the Gulf-funded mosque-building and Arab property investments such as the Hotel Bristol, where alcohol is banned.

"I try not to have any contact with these radical people in mosques or elsewhere," said Adnan Talic, 54, a cobbler whose tiny shop in Sarajevo's centuries-old Ottoman market is thick with the sweet scent of newly tanned leather. "We are afraid of them, but ignoring them is my way of fighting radical Islam."

Several men in Gorjna Maoca denied any ties between the village and violent groups.

"We are good Muslims. We are true believers, and just as we don't want anything bad to happen to us, we don't want anything bad for anyone else," said a bearded, skullcapped man working in his driveway. Like the others, he declined to give his name during a recent visit by McClatchy.

"More attention is being given to the way we look than is warranted. More attention was given by the media to that flag, and it represented nothing. Maybe the children put it there," the man replied when asked about the display of the Islamic State flag, pictures of which were published by local media.

Current and former Bosnian security officials tell a different story, saying the hamlet is linked to extremist networks that run from Western Europe through the Balkans into the Middle East.

More than a dozen men associated with the village are among the Bosnians who've gone to fight in Syria and Iraq, they said. One of them, Emrah Fojnica, 23, blew himself up last August, killing 23 people in Baghdad. In 2011, the settlement hosted a Muslim from Serbia who's now serving an 18-year jail term for spraying more than 100 bullets at the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo.

Possible U.S. ties to the extremist networks were highlighted in February, when a federal grand jury in Kentucky indicted six Bosnian immigrants on charges of sending money, military uniforms, combat boots and other military goods to Bosnians fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Political analysts, moderate clerics and other experts in Bosnia and Kosovo blame senior political and religious leaders, charging they ignored the creeping extremism for years. The leaders were happy to let Islamist charities reconstruct war-damaged mosques, build new ones, and provide aid and educational programs in return for devotion to their brands of Islam.

The few Bosnians who spoke out were publicly denounced by some political and religious leaders as "Islamophobes," said Senad Pecanin, a co-founder of Dani, a crusading investigative magazine that he left in 2010 to practice law. "For years they were attacking anyone who was warning about the threat."

In Kosovo, moderate clerics and political experts charged that the official Islamic Community, the independent body that oversees Islamic affairs, had been taken over by conservatives who've been replacing moderate imams with fundamentalists in a bid to appease radical elements and ensure continued financial support from the Middle East.

"I saw that I couldn't get help from anyone, from the government, from the Islamic Community," said Musli Verbani, 49, a moderate cleric whose car was fire-bombed in 2006 in what he charged was an intimidation campaign that led to his 2011 replacement by a hard-liner as imam of the main mosque in the southern Kosovo town of Kacanik.

Vedat Sahiti, an adviser to Kosovo's chief Islamic cleric, Naim Ternava, denied that the Islamic Community had succumbed to Islamist influence and said the organization didn't accept foreign aid.

"We don't take money from the Middle East," said Sahiti, shortly before proudly pronouncing that the organization's new headquarters and seminary were built with funds from the Saudi and Qatari governments.

Critics noted that 15 clerics, including the then-grand mufti of Pristina's main mosque, were among 55 people detained in August and September crackdowns for allegedly promoting violent extremism and recruiting fighters for Syria and Iraq.

Shpend Kursani, a senior researcher at the Kosovar Center for Security Studies, a policy institute in Pristina, said the crackdowns last year had slowed the flight of young men to Syria and Iraq but that now he was seeing whole families going.

As part of an in-depth study, Kursani has been interviewing young Kosovars who've returned from Syria and Iraq. One has a master's degree in international relations, while 37 percent had police records before they embraced radical Islam, he said.

What they all shared, he said, was little hope of a better future and bitter disillusionment with the corruption and nepotism that infect all levels of Kosovo's political system. Even the anti-corruption mission in Kosovo run by the European Union is under investigation on suspicion of corruption.

Another factor contributing to radicalization, experts and officials said, is that many Kosovars feel betrayed and isolated by the West.

The country's 2008 declaration of independence still hasn't been recognized by the United Nations or all 28 EU members, making Kosovo the only Balkan country whose citizens need visas to travel to EU countries. They can, however, travel without visas to nearby Turkey, the crossing point to fight in Syria and Iraq.

Meanwhile, Serbia refuses to renounce its claim to its former province, and it continues to exert enormous political influence through Kosovo's tiny Serbian minority and its representatives in the legislature.

"We have all the elements of a failed state," said Kursani. "The state cannot provide security to its citizens."

May 1, 2015

Nigeria troops have freed another 234 women and children from Boko Haram's stronghold in the Sambisa forest, the military said Friday.

The defence headquarters said in a statement the hostages were rescued on Thursday through the Kawuri and Konduga end of Sambisa forest.

Some 500 women and children have already been rescued by the military in the past few days.

"They have been evacuated to join others at the place of ongoing screening," the military said.

It said the "assault on the forest is continuing from various fronts and efforts are concentrated on rescuing hostages of civilians and destroying all terrorists camps and facilities in the forest."

The military had pledged to free more hostages from the Islamists after hundreds were rescued earlier this week.

The military announced on Thursday that about 160 hostages had been rescued from Sambisa in additional to 200 girls and 93 women freed on Tuesday.

The numbers underlined the scale of the tactic of mass abduction used by the militants, who according to Amnesty International have seized about 2,000 women and girls since the start of last year.

Female former hostages have described being subjected to forced labour and sexual and psychological abuse as well as sometimes having to fight on the frontline alongside the rebels.

The military had released a series of photographs purporting to show some of the rescued women and children in an undisclosed location, huddled on the ground watched over by soldiers.

It was still not clear if any of the 219 girls snatched in April 2014 from their school in the northeastern town of Chibok were among the freed hostages.

The military said they were still screening the freed hostages with a view to establishing their identities.

The mass kidnapping in Chibok prompted global outrage and forced President Goodluck Jonathan to accept international help in the search operation for the missing girls.

Jonathan has come under severe criticism for not doing enough to free the Chibok girls as well as end the six-year-old Boko Haram insurgency that has claimed some 13,000 lives and forced at least 1.5 million people to flee their homes.

Many analysts believe the protracted Boko Haram uprising was partly responsible for Jonathan's defeat in the March 28 presidential election to former Former military ruler Mohammadu Buhari.

Buhari, who is due to assume office on May 29, has vowed to crush the militants who want to create a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.

May 1, 2015

The fight over whether MillerCoors can call Blue Moon a “craft beer” is headed for the courts.

In 2012, the Brewers Association, an organization representing US brewers, set new standards for qualifying as a “craft brewer.” First, the size must be “small,” meaning the brewery makes a maximum of 6 million barrels annually. Second, craft brewers are “independent”—less than 25% of the business can be owned or controlled by a maker of alcoholic beverages that is not also a craft brewer. Finally, the brewery must be “traditional,” in that the majority of the alcohol it makes is beer using traditional or innovative ingredients (think: the local honey used by Brooklyn Brewery).

Bottom line: Craft brewers are the little guys making actual beer, not the giant corporations making watered-down beer-like substances.

Then there is Blue Moon, which is owned by MillerCoors. Its signature beer, a Belgian-style white wheat brew with a citrusy flavor, has a stylishly retro label. It wants to be called a craft beer, and whether it should be allowed to, MillerCoors CEO Tom Long argued in an op-ed for CNN in 2012, should “not come from an industry organization, but instead from America’s beer drinkers.”

But a class action suit filed last week says the company is engaging in false and deceptive advertising. It points to MillerCoors’ production of 2.4 billion gallons of beer per year, as well as the fact that the Blue Moon website doesn’t mention MillerCoors, even though theMillerCoors’ website plays up Blue Moon. Bottles and cans of Blue Moon leave out its corporate parentage. The suit also points to the MillerCoors trademarked term, “Artfully Crafted,” used on the website and in marketing materials.

Quartz has reached out to MillerCoors for comment on the suit but has not heard back. This post will be updated with any response.

By marketing its product this way, the suit says, MillerCoors is taking advantage of the premium that beer aficionados are willing to spend for real craft beer, without actually delivering it.

While the lawsuit is filed as a class action, and the complaint states that “the Class is comprised of ‘consumers’ and ‘members of the public,'” the plaintiff —a San Diego, California man named Evan Parent—is currently the only named member of the class. “I imagine as we go forward there may be a few people who come forward,” said his attorney James M. Treglio, who is also an old friend of Parent’s. As for the best possible outcome of the case, Treglio told Quartz, “ideally the marketing of Blue Moon would change and… at least some money would go back to the members of the class for their purchase.”

For its part, the Brewers Association says it doesn’t say what is and isn’t a craft beer—it only defines craft brewers. ”Blue Moon would not be a craft brewer,” Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association told Quartz, “because it’s owned by MillerCoors.”

Unlike other lawsuits that have alleged that particular labels are misleading, this lawsuit is going after the whole marketing scheme, food and beverage attorney Lindsey A. Zahn tells Quartz. “This [suit] doesn’t talk too much about the label,” she says, adding that the company is using “Artfully Crafted” in advertisements more than on bottles. “It doesn’t seem like they’re saying this is a craft beer,” she says, comparing it to the recent lawsuit against Tito’s Handmade Vodka which uses the word “handmade” on the actual bottles. Instead, Zahn says, MillerCoors could be saying that there’s an “art behind creating it.”

It’s not hard to understand why MillerCoors (and Anheuser-Busch In Bev with Shock Top, for that matter) has inserted itself into the craft beer market: Craft beer sales were up 17.6% in 2014, while overall beer sales were up a lousy 0.5%, according to the Brewers Association. MillerCoors, which is not a publicly traded company but a joint venture of SABMiller pls and MolsonCoors (TAP), reported in February that profits were down 12%.

May 1, 2015

Eighteen black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died soon after birth at a St. Louis hospital now wonder if the infants were taken away by hospital officials to be raised by other families.

The suspicions arose from the story of Zella Jackson Price, who was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis. Hours later, she was told that her daughter had died, but she never saw a body or a death certificate.

No one is sure who was responsible, but Price's daughter ended up in foster care, only to resurface almost 50 years later. Melanie Gilmore, who now lives in Eugene, Oregon, has said that her foster parents always told her she was given up by her birth mother.

Price's attorney, Albert Watkins, is asking city and state officials to investigate. In a letter to Gov. Jay Nixon and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, Watkins said he suspects the hospital coordinated a scheme "to steal newborns of color for marketing in private adoption transactions."

The women's story spread in recent weeks after Gilmore's children tracked down her birth mother as part of a plan to mark their mother's 50th birthday. The search led them to the now 76-year-old Price, who lives in suburban St. Louis.

In March, an online video caused a sensation when it showed the moment that Gilmore, who is deaf, learned through lip reading and sign language that her birth mother had been found.

The two women reunited in April. DNA confirmed that they are mother and daughter.

"She looked like me," said Price, a gospel singer who has five other children. "She was so excited and full of joy. It was just beautiful. I'll never forget that," she said of the reunion.

After the reunion, Watkins started getting calls from other women who wondered if their babies, whom they were told had died, might have instead been taken from them.

Their stories, he said, are strikingly similar: Most of the births were in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s at Homer G. Phillips. All of the mothers were black and poor, mostly ages 15 to 20.

In each case, a nurse — not a doctor — told the mother that her child had died, a breach of normal protocol. No death certificates were issued, and none of the mothers were allowed to see their deceased infants.

"These are moms," attorney Albert Watkins said. "They are mothers at the end of their lives seeking answers to a lifelong hole in their heart."

He plans to file a lawsuit seeking birth and death records. None of the women are seeking money, he said.

Watkins has no idea who, or how many people, may have been responsible if babies were being taken, though he believes they were stolen and put up for adoption in an era when there were few adoption agencies catering to black couples.

Homer G. Phillips Hospital opened in 1937 as a blacks-only hospital at a time when St. Louis was segregated. Even after desegregation in the mid-1950s, the hospital served predominantly African-American patients.

The hospital closed in 1979. Messages seeking comment from officials at the St. Louis Health Department were not returned.

Price gave birth to a baby girl born two months' premature on Nov. 25, 1965. The baby weighed just over 2 pounds but Price was able to hold the crying child after birth.

A nurse took the baby away and came back an hour later. The little girl was struggling to live, Price was told. She might not make it.

Shortly thereafter, the nurse came back. The baby, she said, was dead.

Price recovered in the hospital for two more days, in a ward surrounded by happy mothers.

"It was depressing to see when they rolled the babies in and they were taking them to their mothers, but I didn't have my baby," she recalled.

Gussie Parker, 82, of St. Louis, heard Price's story and was shocked by the similarities with her own life. Parker gave birth to a premature girl on Nov. 5, 1953.

Initially, she said, the child seemed fine. A short time later, a nurse told her that her daughter had died.

"I never did see the baby or get a death certificate," said Parker, whose daughter, Diane, works for The Associated Press in New York. "When you're young and someone comes and tells you that you're baby's dead, in those days you accepted it."

Otha Mae Brand, 63, of St. Louis, was 15 when she gave birth to a girl in the spring of 1967. The child was two months' premature and was hospitalized for 10 days while Brand was sent home.

She got a call from a nurse who informed her of her daughter's death.

"I had no reason not to believe them," Brand said. "I got that phone call and that was the last I heard."

Now, she wonders.

"I told my children, 'It's a possibility your sister may be living,'" she said.

Retired physician Mary Tillman was an intern and did a residency at Homer G. Phillips in the 1960s. Calls to her home on Friday were unanswered, but she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the hospital had protocols and record-keeping to track mothers and daughters. She never had any suspicions of wrongdoing, but said it should have been doctors, not nurses, who broke the news of death to mothers.

Price, who has five other children, said she's saddened by the lost years that she could have spent with her daughter.

"For me not to be able to love on this child like I did with the others, I'm going through a lot of emotions," said Price. "But I'm so blessed to know that she is alive."

May 1, 2015

The stepchildren of a woman killed in an automobile crash involving Bruce Jenner have sued the Olympic gold medalist.

The wrongful death case was filed Friday in Los Angeles by the stepchildren of Kim Howe, whose car was pushed into oncoming traffic after Jenner's sport utility vehicle collided with it on Pacific Coast Highway in February.

The lawsuit by Dana Redmond and William Howe does not specify how much they are seeking, but states they have sustained enormous damages.

Jenner's publicist Alan Nierob declined comment.

Jenner has not been charged in the case. An investigation is ongoing.

Jenner said in a TV interview that he identifies as a woman and has felt gender confusion since he was a boy.

May 1, 2015

Morgan Freeman says his new film "Five Flights Up," about the media speculation that occurs after a Muslim man's truck is stopped on a bridge, mirrors the recent events in Baltimore, but he isn't impressed with how cable news has covered the unrest. "Isn't that always happening?" Freeman said to the Daily Beast. "Look at MSNBC, Fox News and CNN. Go between those three. There's a take, there's a take and there's a take. It's just commentary. CNN wants to be pure news, but the others are just commentary. They're just commenting on things."

May 1, 2015

Six officers are charged in Freddie Gray's death from injuries he suffered while in police custody. State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby says the officers repeatedly failed to get Gray medical treatment after his arrest. The police officers' union has said they are not responsible for Gray's death.

Here is a look at each of the six officers.

___

OFFICER CAESAR R. GOODSON Jr.

Goodson was the driver of the van that transported Freddie Gray, and he faces the most serious charges. Mosby said Friday that Goodson repeatedly failed — at least five times — to seatbelt Gray in the transport vehicle. Overall, Goodson faces six charges, including "second-degree depraved heart murder," which carries a potential 30-year sentence.

Goodson, 45, has been on the force since 1999, and like two others charged in Gray's death is black. Online court records list the three other officers' race in a category that includes Caucasians and people of Arab descent.

Friends describe Goodson as a family man who likes to watch football and works part time as an auto mechanic at a shop specializing in Saabs. With help, he restored a green Saab convertible, a car one friend says he only takes out a few times a year. He wasn't scheduled to work on the day Gray was arrested but had been asked to work overtime, friends said.

A friend who worked with him as a mechanic said Goodson had hoped to retire in several years.

An obituary for his mother published in the Baltimore Sun in 2012 says his grandfather was a police officer.

___

LT. BRIAN W. RICE

Rice was on bike patrol when he made eye contact with Freddie Gray on a Baltimore street April 12. Gray ran, and Rice pursued him. Bike patrol officers Garrett Miller and Edward Nero joined the pursuit.

Rice, 41, is the most senior officer to be charged. He joined the police force in 1997 and was promoted to lieutenant in 2011, police said. Records obtained by The Associated Press from a sheriff's department and court show he was hospitalized in April 2012 following concerns about his mental health. Worries about his stability led deputies to confiscate both his official and personal guns, and his commanding officer was called. It was not immediately clear whether or when all of Rice's guns were returned.

___

OFFICER GARRETT E. MILLER AND OFFICER EDWARD M. NERO

Gray surrendered to Miller, 26, and Nero, 29. Miller and Nero handcuffed Gray and put him on the ground. Gray told the officers that he couldn't breathe and requested an inhaler, Mosby said. The two officers, both of whom joined the police force in 2012, sat Gray up and found a folded knife clipped to the inside of his pants pocket, a knife that is lawful under Maryland law, Mosby said. Previously, police have said they found a switchblade.

Mosby said Gray didn't commit any crime, and the officers "illegally arrested Mr. Gray."

The officers put the knife on the sidewalk and then put Gray back down on his stomach, when he started to flail his legs and scream, Mosby said.

Nero held Gray down until Goodson arrived driving a police transport van. Miller, Nero and Rice then put Gray inside.

While Gray was being transported, Miller, Nero and Rice took him out of the wagon and put flex handcuffs and leg shackles on him. After that stop, they put Gray back into the van on his stomach without a seatbelt.

___

OFFICER WILLIAM G. PORTER

At one point during the van ride, Goodson requested help checking on Gray. Porter, 25, who joined the force in 2012, responded. Both he and Goodson checked on Gray. Porter, who is black, helped Gray from the floor to a bench in the van, but neither Goodson nor Porter requested medical attention or put a seatbelt on Gray.

___

SGT. ALICIA D. WHITE

White is the second-highest officer charged in the Gray case. She met the van at its stop to pick up the second person. White, 30, was responsible for investigating two citizen complaints about Gray's arrest. White, who is black, joined the police in 2010 and was recently made a sergeant in January 2015, police said.

During the stop, White, Goodson and Porter saw Gray unresponsive on the floor. White "spoke to the back of Gray's head" but he did not respond, Mosby said. The group did not call for medical assistance.

May 1, 2015

A Fraternal Order of Police lodge is asking Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby to appoint a special prosecutor to the Freddie Gray investigation because of her personal connection to the Gray family's attorney, William H. "Billy" Murphy Jr., and her marriage to a city councilman.

The letter from Gene Ryan, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, also states that none of the six officers involved in Gray's arrest and death were responsible for the 25-year-old West Baltimore man's death that spurred protests and unrest, including rioting and looting on Monday. The letter was released just minutes before Mosby announced charges against the officers Friday.

"Not one of the officers involved in this tragic situation left home in the morning with the anticipation that someone with whom they interacted would not go home that night," the letter states. "As tragic as this situation is, none of the officers involved are responsible for the death of Mr. Gray."

Ryan requests that Mosby appoint a "Special Independent Prosecutor."

"I have very deep concerns about the many conflicts of interest presented by your office conducting an investigation in this case," the letter states.

"These conflicts include your personal and professional relations with Gray family attorney, William Murphy, and the lead prosecutor's connections with members of the local media," the letter states. "Based on several nationally televised interviews, these reporters are likely to be witnesses in any potential litigation regarding this incident."

Murphy supported Mosby during her campaign last year. He donated $5,000 to her campaign and served on her transition committee.

In a statement to The Baltimore Sun, Mosby said the Gray case doesn't pose any conflicts for her and the police union donated to other candidates in election to be the state's attorney.

"State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby has been elected by the residents in Baltimore City to uphold the law in every neighborhood including her own, regardless of if her husband is the councilman within the district where numerous crimes occur," said spokeswoman Rochelle Ritchie. "Hundreds of people donated to her campaign. There is no conflict of interest surrounding Billy Murphy. He is representing the family in a civil case which has nothing to do with the criminal case."

The FOP letter also expresses problems with Mosby's marriage to Baltimore City Councilman Nick Mosby.

"Most importantly, it is clear that your husband's political future will be directly impacted, for better or worse, by the outcome of your investigation," the letter states. "In order to avoid any appearance of impropriety or a violation of the Professional Rules of Professional Responsibility, I ask that you appoint a Special Prosecutor to determine whether or not any charges should be filed."

The letter continued:

"We recognize that there are many dimensions to this situation: the public sentiments — on all sides; the investigation being conducted by your office; the internal police investigation; and a necessary review of the tools, equipment, and resources afforded to Baltimore police officers in order to carry out their sworn duty as police officers."

The letter also states that the officers involved in the case are "sincerely saddened by Mr. Gray's passing."

"They are all committed police officers who have dedicated their careers to the Baltimore City Police Department," he writes. "And that has been lost in all of the publicity. All death is tragic. And death associated with interaction with police is both shocking and frightening to the public.

"Each of the officers diligently balanced their obligations to protect Mr. Gray and discharge their duties to protect the public," the letter states. "I have full faith in your professional integrity. While I have the utmost respect for you and your office, I have very deep concerns about the many conflicts of interest presented by your office conducting an investigation in this case."

April 27, 2015

With international aid beginning to flow but desperation still rising, rescue crews in Nepal expanded helicopter searches Monday into remote villages believed to be the worst hit from a massive earthquake that already has claimed more than 4,200 lives.

The missions deep into the Himalayan valleys highlighted worries that the death toll could still rise from Saturday’s 7.8 magnitude quake that flattened densely populated areas near Kathmandu, toppled centuries-old monuments and buried Everest base camp with a deadly avalanche of snow and jagged ice.

In Kathmandu and elsewhere, the smoky haze from mass cremations wafted over the devastation after skies cleared following torrential rain. Survivors massed in tent camps amid frightening aftershocks and fears of further landslides on quake-weakened slopes.

“There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I’ve had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed,” said Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official in the central Gorkha district near the temblor’s epicenter.

April 27, 2015

Ten bikers said to be from the Russian nationalist Night Wolves group have been turned back at the Polish border with Belarus.

The bikers had planned to cross Poland on their way to Berlin to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two in May.

The Polish government described their plans last week as "provocative".

The Night Wolves back Russian President Vladimir Putin's Ukraine policy - something strongly opposed by Poland.

The group is subject to US sanctions for alleged active involvement in Crimea - annexed by Russia from Ukraine last year - and for helping to recruit separatist fighters for Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Russia's foreign ministry had already expressed "outrage" at Poland's ban.

The border guards, who did not specify that the bikers were Night Wolves members, said the 10 did not fulfil the conditions to enter and stay in Poland. Polish news agency PAP reported that the 10 were members of the Night Wolves.

They were held in a Polish facility at Terespol after Belarus frontier guards let them pass.

On Friday, the Polish foreign ministry cited safety concerns, saying the bikers had informed the Polish authorities of their plans too late and had provided vague information.

However, Polish media reports suggested some 200 Night Wolves bikers had managed to cross into Poland from the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad after obtaining visas, though they were not part of the group heading from Moscow to Berlin.

The Night Wolves' planned road trip through Poland stirred controversy because of the group's close association with Vladimir Putin and its support of Moscow's annexation of Crimea and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, the BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw says.

They are viewed in Poland as the "Kremlin's Hells Angels", he adds.

However, some Polish bikers are reported to view the Night Wolves favourably, with one group offering to escort them on their trip through Poland.

On Sunday, the Night Wolves stopped in Russia at a World War Two memorial to Polish soldiers killed in the Katyn massacre by the Soviet Union.

The Night Wolves intend to cross several countries on a 6,000km (3,720 mile) trip following the path taken by the Red Army in World War Two, with the aim of arriving in Berlin in time to coincide with Victory Day celebrations in Moscow on 9 May.

April 27, 2015

A massive block of Earth’s crust, roughly 75 miles long and 37 miles wide, lurched 10 feet to the south Saturday over the course of 30 seconds. Riding atop this block of the planet was the capital of Nepal — Kathmandu — and millions of Nepalese.

That’s the description of Saturday’s earthquake from University of Colorado geologist Roger Bilham, a world-renowned expert on Himalayan earthquakes. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that flattened historic buildings in Kathmandu and has taken more than a thousand lives is the latest release of built-up strain from the collision of two of Earth’s tectonic plates. The Indian plate is inexorably sliding, in a halting, ground-shaking fashion, northward, beneath the much larger Eurasian plate. The process has created the lofty Tibetan plateau and pushed up mountains that reach nearly 30,000 feet above sea level. The Himalaya front can produce earthquakes that are much more powerful than the one on Saturday — such as the 8.2-magnitude earthquake that hit Nepal in 1934. But this one was relatively shallow, which intensifies the surface shaking, and its epicenter was closer to Kathmandu than the 1934 temblor.

“The earthquake ruptured under the city, very close to the city, so this is as bad as our worst-case scenario, probably,” Bilham said.

As news reports filtered in, experts predicted the death toll will mount steadily. “I expect that there’s devastation scattered all around Nepal that we’re not even glimpsing at this point,” said Susan Hough, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who has made multiple trips to Nepal. The news bulletin of the massive quake hit Hough and colleagues hard. Theirs can be a frustrating profession, because they know there are natural disasters and humanitarian crises about to happen somewhere — but they can’t predict precisely where and when. This one, however, had been long anticipated. For years now, experts on seismic hazard have kept a list of cities most vulnerable to a catastrophic earthquake. Kathmandu has always been high on that list. Geology, urbanization, architecture and building codes have increased the vulnerability of the Nepalese, experts say, and the only major unknown has been the timing of the disaster. “We knew it was going to happen. We saw it in ’34,” Hough said. “The earthquakes we expect to happen do happen.” Scientists, engineers and government officials have worked in recent years on retrofitting schools and hospitals to make them sturdier in a temblor. But at the same time, civil unrest has pushed more people into urban areas, where they inhabit newly constructed, unreinforced-masonry buildings that in many cases are not designed to withstand the strong motion of a quake. Another problem: Buildings often have what engineers call a “soft first story,” because merchants want open spaces to sell their wares and there are fewer sturdy walls to limit the shaking in an earthquake.

“It was clearly a disaster in the making that was getting worse faster than anyone was able to make it better,” Hough said. “You’re up against a Himalayan-scale problem with Third World resources.”

Bilham agreed: “The message has not been ignored, it’s just that the scope of the reconstruction required to strengthen all the buildings in Kathmandu is so enormous.”

The orthodoxy among seismologists is that earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings kill people. The challenge of improving building codes has become all the more urgent in an era when urbanization is surging in many parts of the world, including in the Kathmandu Valley.

“It seems that the rural-to-

urban migration of people has resulted in really rapid construction of housing which, as far as I can see from my visits, has been unregulated and is just very, very vulnerable,” said Brian Tucker, founder and president of GeoHazards International, a nonprofit devoted to reducing casualties from natural disasters.

On Saturday, he recalled a conversation in the late 1990s with a Nepalese government minister who told him, “We don’t have to worry about earthquakes anymore, because we already had an earthquake.” That was a reference to the 1934 quake.

“I took him to the window and had him look out and said, ‘As long as you see those Himalaya Mountains there, you will know that you will continue to have earthquakes,’ ” Tucker said.

April 27, 2015

Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) on Sunday urged Republicans to exercise caution when referencing a controversial new book detailing Hillary Clinton’s financial dealings.

“Republicans need to be careful not to overstate the case,” Hutchinson said of author Peter Schweizer’s “Clinton Cash.”

“There’s no evidence of quid pro quo,” he told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“There is evidence of mistakes,” Hutchinson added of Clinton’s fiscal decisions.

Hutchinson on Sunday argued the expose was unlikely to sway partisan voters. Its true impact, he charged, would impact centrists within the American electorate.

“It doesn’t impact her base or the Republican base,” Hutchinson said of the book’s accusations.

“It impacts the voters in the middle,” he said.

“Everything about the Clintons is complicated,” the governor concluded.

Peter Schweizer’s book alleges that the Clinton Foundation accepted donations from foreign entities. In exchange, it claims they received political favors from the State Department during Clinton’s tenure as secretary there.

The Clinton Foundation on Thursday announced it would redo multiple tax returns and audit others in response to Schweizer’s claims.

The Clinton campaign has rebuked the author as a conservative operative spreading political smears. Schweizer formerly wrote speeches for President George W. Bush.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, urged the Clinton Foundation on Thursday to return all of its questionable donations cash donations.

April 27, 2015

As a slate of Republican presidential contenders took their turns on the stump here Saturday, threats from abroad – rather than moral issues at home – were at the forefront for many of the evangelical voters who flocked to Point of Grace Church.

There was plenty of talk about same-sex marriage, abortion and religious liberty among White House hopefuls and attendees alike at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition's annual spring forum. But for the crowd of roughly 1,000 socially conservative voters, the lines that drew some of the loudest applause, foot-stomping and whistling of the night were about foreign policy. Between concern over the rise of the Islamic State in the Middle East and staunch disapproval of the Obama administration's handling of relations with Israel and Iran, Iowa evangelical leaders and activists say that national security has become a top – if not the top -- issue heading into the 2016 caucuses. "I think that is clear at the top because the bottom line is if you don't have security, and you have ISIS on our shore, it's all over," Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition president Steve Scheffler said in an interview. "No issue — whether it's the life issue or the marriage issue, or taxes or spending or overregulation — it's all moot if our culture is destroyed." Social conservatives are no strangers to foreign affairs, and have always been supportive of Israel in particular. But Bob Vander Plaats, the president of the Family Leader, another influential conservative Iowa-based organization, said that foreign policy is "without question" of more importance to evangelical voters this election cycle compared to recent presidential campaigns due to the new issues that have emerged abroad. "Foreign policy is going to be a big issue for conservatives today. And the reason is because of what they see Obama doing with our relationship with Israel." Vander Plaats said during an interview at his Urbandale office late last week. "I think there's no doubt it's a higher level of importance this go around." That was reflected in the Faith and Freedom Coalition's event on Saturday. Of the nine GOP White House hopefuls who spoke at the forum, all but Ted Cruz – who focused almost exclusively on religious freedom — touched on national security, even if the topic wasn't the main thrust of their speech. Marco Rubio only spent a few minutes talking about foreign policy during his first major Iowa speech as an official presidential candidate. But the Florida senator received some of his biggest applause of the night when he derided the framework for a nuclear deal the Obama administration reached with Iranian leaders earlier this year. "How can it be that our president shows more respect for the Ayatollah in Iran than our allies in Israel?" Rubio said. Rick Santorum, who assured the audience that he has been "very focused" on Iran, also criticized the tentative nuclear agreement. The 2012 Iowa caucus winner didn't address social issues once during his 21-minute speech, but did take the time to highlight the foreign policy credentials he gained during his stint in the U.S. Senate.

"Iran is not a country you can negotiate with. They have never kept a treaty," Santorum said. "I don't care how good this treaty is—it's horrible right now. But even if it was good, here's my promise to the Iranian government: on the first day of a Santorum presidency, that agreement is in the trash can." Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who is expected officially announce whether she will run for president on May 4, also went out of her way to tout her resume on national security issues. She noted that she has served as the head of the advisory board for the CIA and has advised secretaries of State, Defense, and Homeland Security. She also claimed that she has met with more world leaders than any other presidential prospect – with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton, she conceded.

Fiorina's best-received moment came when she said, in reference to the nuclear agreement, "We should stop talking to Iran now." "The world is a dangerous place when the America does not stand with our allies and does not stand strong against our adversaries," Fiorina said. Scott Walker became the most animated during his speech when discussing foreign policy, an area that has been seen as a possible weak spot for the Wisconsin governor. Pointing to recent terrorist attacks in foreign countries and the beheadings of Coptic Christians in Egypt, Walker warned that "it's not a matter of if an attempt is made on American soil again, it is when." "I believe that Americans want a commander-in-chief who will stand up and tell it like it is, who will tell the American people that the biggest threat we face in the world today is radical Islamic terrorism and will do something about it," Walker said, earning enthusiastic applause even in the fifth and final hour of the event.

April 27, 2015

It has become a political rite of spring. For the second year in a row, House Speaker John Boehner has released a video of himself with his lawnmower. 

Titled "Lawn Care 101," this year's clip, features Boehner going to his local hardware store to pick up a newly-sharpened blade for his Toro mower. 

"This is how it's supposed to be," Boehner says while running his thumb across the blades sharp edge. "That cuts grass, it doesn't tear it." 

Back home, the Speaker is seen affixing the new blade, and adding oil to the mower, before the message, "Happy Spring" appears on the screen. 

A press release accompanying the video touts the Speaker as someone who “still irons his own shirts, washes his own dishes, and yes … cuts his own grass.”

Boehner has often used his social media channels to promote the notion that he's a regular guy who does regular things when he's not overseeing the business of the House of Representatives. A video the Speaker cut during his 2014 re- election campaign was even titled "Regular Guy."

"When it's all said and done, I'm just a regular guy who has been given a chance to do a big job," Boehner says in the spot. 

To that effect, the lawn mower has been utilized two years in a row.  

During a 2014 appearance on the Tonight Show, Boehner told then-host Jay Leno that he wasn't interested in running for president, in part, because he wouldn't want it to interfere with his lawn mowing.

"I like to cut my own grass," Boehner said. "You know, I do drink red wine. I smoke cigarettes. And I'm not giving that up to be the President of the United States." 

April 27, 2015

It is one of the oddities of this campaign season: In races for two of the most sought-after political offices in the country, two Democratic women are running virtually unchallenged, their tasks both boosted and complicated by the veneer of inevitability.

Nationally, of course, there is Hillary Rodham Clinton, opening her second try for the party's presidential nomination with a "Hi, everybody!" tour of bakeries and coffee shops and workplaces where voters gather in key electoral states, the better to infuse her effort with the humanity she can have a hard time demonstrating on her own.

And in California there is Kamala Harris, running for a U.S. Senate seat to be vacated by 22-year veteran Barbara Boxer, campaigning fiercely behind the scenes and in the fundraising salons but virtually invisible to the voters who will determine her fate. If there are similarities between the two - neither at this point has a popular or well-financed opponent, though that could change, particularly in California - there are vast differences as well. Clinton may be the best-known woman in the world - given her tortured tenure as first lady to the nation's most popular politician, Bill Clinton; her two New York elections to the Senate; her term as secretary of state. Harris is in her second term as attorney general of California, which would be a bigger deal in any state other than California, which prefers its elected officials to be neither seen nor heard. After spending millions on her campaigns - in no small part to smooth the path for the present one - she in some ways remains a mystery, with 60% of the state's voters lacking an impression of her in a February USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

Driving their strategic moves is what each woman must prove. For Clinton, the imperative is not necessarily to immediately amass giant sums but to prove that this campaign will be better than the last, that her painful loss to Barack Obama in 2008 infused her with a political humility that will turn loss into victory in 2016. That can be harder to do when there is, as yet, no real competition. Thus she entered the race via a video that featured voters in the front seat and herself in the far, far back. She traveled to Iowa - in a van that she likened to Scooby Doo's, although the resemblance was imaginary - and went out of her way to remind her small audiences that she was there to learn from them, not the other way around. She repeated it all in New Hampshire last week. "At this point in the campaign I have a very strong commitment to listening," she told guests in the living room of a cozy, antiques-filled two-story home in Claremont, N.H. "I think it's a lost art in politics and I'm going to try to single-handedly bring it back so that people will actually have a conversation again about what's going on in your life." Harris' conversations will have to wait, for her must-do list is different. The illusion of inevitability is her friend, more than it is Clinton's, for it will do more to dissuade others from entering the race. To be sure, she is also working at a job she just won in November. That job does double duty in pushing her political image. Last week, for instance, she issued a statement commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide - unlike President Obama, she pointedly used the freighted term, which will not go unnoticed by the significant Armenian community in places like Southern California.

"Today, we honor the memory of the nearly 1.5 million Armenians who were brutally murdered from 1915 to 1923 at the hands of the Ottoman Empire," she wrote. "The Armenian genocide is one of humanity's darkest chapters. We must never forget the atrocities committed against the Armenian people as we remain vigilant in our fight against civil and human rights violations."

She also flew to New York for the global Women in the World conference, where she took part in a panel on cyber exploitation. Yahoo anchor Katie Couric introduced Harris as someone "known for getting very tough and leading your state" on cyber crimes.

Harris described herself as the state's "top cop" - a favorite phrase - and repeated remarks she had made in her only other public appearance of the campaign: a March fundraiser in Washington, D.C., for the Emily's List political group. "A harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us; a crime against any one of us is a crime against all of us," she told the audience, drawing applause. It might seem odd that Harris' only public showings so far have been a continent away from the state in which she is running. But her campaign strategists point to her need to raise the big dollars necessary in any California race. 

April 27, 2015

A solid majority of American voters back President Barack Obama's interim nuclear deal with Iran, a poll by Quinnipiac University showed Monday.

Some 58 percent of voters back the outline deal, which would curb Iran's atomic program for more than a decade and subject Tehran to tough inspections.

An outline agreement was reached on April 2 between Iran and six world powers, but met with fierce opposition from US Republicans who say it would threaten America's security.

While voters overwhelmingly backed the accord being put to a vote in the Republican-controlled Congress, only 33 percent of voters opposed the deal, far less than the number who vote for the Republican party.

Forty-seven Senate Republicans -- including several potential 2016 presidential candidates -- have signed an open letter to Iran's supreme leader warning the deal might not be honored by a Republican administration.

Iran and international powers hope to have a final deal in place by the end of June.

Some 77 percent of voters said they wanted to see a negotiated settlement to the nuclear crisis rather than military intervention.

"Americans are worried about Iran, but not enough to send in the troops," said Tim Malloy of Quinnipiac.

The poll was taken between April 16 and 21 and surveyed 1,353 registered voters.

April 27, 2015

A string of deadly confrontations between mostly white police and black men will be among the challenges immediately facing new U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who was sworn in on Monday. Lynch, 55, takes over as the country's top law enforcement official after a weekend that saw thousands of people in Baltimore take to the streets in mostly peaceful protests over the latest such case. A 25-year- old black man died a week after being injured while in police custody.Following her swearing in by Vice President Joe Biden, Lynch signaled that improving relations between police and the communities they protect will be high on her agenda. "We can restore trust and faith both in our laws and in those of us who enforce them," she said.

Building on her career as an accomplished federal prosecutor, Lynch takes over from Eric Holder, who served more than six turbulent years at the head of the Justice Department. Holder was the first black U.S. attorney general and Lynch becomes the first black woman to hold the job. Besides the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, other questionable encounters between police and black males in recent months have led to unrest in South Carolina, Missouri, Ohio and New York. The Justice Department is probing whether excessive force was used against minorities in violation of their civil rights.

"This whole police community relations situation ... is the civil rights cause for this generation," said Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings, whose Baltimore constituents want answers about Gray's unexplained death. Cummings' remarks on Sunday were broadcast from an interview on the CBS program "Face the Nation." In recent interviews, Holder has said it should be easier to bring charges of civil rights violations. He was unable to do this in the case of a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who was involved in a fatal shooting in August 2014. Lowering the legal bar in such cases would need an act of Congress. Whether Lynch carries on with Holder's effort in that direction is uncertain. She has promised to pursue a smoother relationship with Congress. Holder often clashed with Republican lawmakers and was found in contempt of Congress in 2012 for withholding some documents related to a failed gun-running probe. Lynch presides over a sprawling department made up of 40 organizations including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, an overburdened Civil Rights Division, the FBI, the U.S. Parole Commission and the Anti-Trust Division. Besides trying to improve community policing, Lynch faces other daunting problems. The director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, part of the DOJ, resigned this month over reports that agents attended sex parties with prostitutes hired by Colombian drug cartels.

Meanwhile, the department Lynch has inherited has recently struck a sterner tone with financial institutions accused of misconduct.

Lynch will have to tackle settlements pending with banks over the manipulation of currency markets and charges of helping clients evade U.S. taxes. Six major banks could settle as soon as May on allegations they manipulated foreign exchange markets.

Add in the threat of cybersecurity breaches and American citizens seeking to become Islamic State fighters and Lynch has a full plate.

Attorneys general invariably confront problems that come out of nowhere, as well, making it one of the highest-profile positions in any administration.

Janet Reno, President Bill Clinton's attorney general from 1993-2001, dealt with crises including the bombing of an Oklahoma federal building, a deadly confrontation with the "Branch Davidians" sect in Waco, Texas, and the arrival in Florida of a young Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, whose custody battle grew into an international incident.

Robert Kennedy in the early 1960s took on organized crime and union boss Jimmy Hoffa, while also sending federal marshals to enforce a court order allowing black student James Meredith to attend the University of Mississippi.

Elliot Richardson resigned during the Watergate-era "Saturday Night Massacre" and John Ashcroft was in a hospital sick bed in 2004 when top White House officials reportedly tried but failed to get his approval for a controversial domestic surveillance program.

Lynch survived a difficult and lengthy Senate confirmation process with most Republicans voting against her. That may end up being the easiest part of her run as attorney general.

April 21, 2015

Blamed initially on 'engine failure', it emerged on Tuesday that a government jet carrying Serbia's president to Italy last week was forced to turn back when the co-pilot spilled coffee on the instrument board.

Advisers to President Tomislav Nikolic described being "thrown around the cabin" when the plane -- a 34-year-old French-built Falcon 50 -- began tumbling through the air on Friday.

The plane landed safely back in Belgrade, but Nikolic was forced to cancel his official visit to meet Pope Francis in the Vatican, and his advisers put the incident down to yet another malfunction on the ageing, incident-prone aircraft.

One adviser told Reuters that she would "never step foot on that plane again," saying the fall had lasted "for what seemed like an eternity".

An investigation determined that the co-pilot, Bojan Zoric, had spilled coffee on the instrument board "due to ongoing turbulence".

"I began wiping the board and accidentally activated the 'emergency slat' button," which automatically turned off the automatic pilot and the plane began losing altitude, Zoric said in the report by Serbia's Civil Aviation Directorate .

The pilot took over command, managed to pull the plane up and sought permission to turn back to Belgrade, Zoric added. He said that one of the engines then stopped working but was restarted on the way back to the airport.

The Directorate temporarily suspended Zoric's license on Monday.

April 21, 2015

Pope Francis on Tuesday accepted the resignation of a U.S. bishop who pleaded guilty to failing to report a suspected priestly child abuser in the first known case of a pope sanctioning bishops for covering up for pedophiles.

The Vatican said Tuesday that Bishop Robert Finn had offered his resignation under the code of canon law that allows bishops to resign early for illness or some "grave" reason that makes them unfit for office. It didn't provide a reason.

Finn, who leads the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri, waited six months before notifying police about the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, whose computer contained hundreds of lewd photos of young girls taken in and around churches where he worked. Ratigan was sentenced to 50 years in prison after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.

Finn pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failure to report suspected abuse and was sentenced to two years' probation in 2012. Ever since, he has faced pressure from local Roman Catholics to step down, with some parishioners petitioning Francis to remove him from the diocese.

No U.S. bishop has been removed for covering up for guilty clergy.

Finn remains the highest-ranking church official in the U.S. to be convicted of failing to take action in response to abuse allegations. The Vatican's failure to sanction or remove him had fueled victims' complaints that bishops were continuing to enjoy protections even under the "zero tolerance" pledge of Francis.

Even Francis' top sex abuse adviser, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, had said publicly that Francis needs to "urgently" address Finn's case, though he later stressed that Finn deserved due process and must be spared "crowd-based condemnations."

The Vatican last fall sent a Canadian archbishop to Finn's diocese as part of his an investigation of his leadership. But until Tuesday, there had been no word about what the pope would do.

Finn's resignation comes as Francis is facing similar pressure to remove a Chilean bishop, Juan Barros, amid an unprecedented outcry over his longtime affiliation with Chile's most notorious molester, the Rev. Fernando Karadima.

Karadima's victims say Barros witnessed their abuse decades ago. He has denied knowing anything until he read news reports of Karadima's crimes in 2010. The Vatican has defended the appointment. Karadima was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for sexually abusing minors.

Earlier this month, members of the pope's sex abuse advisory commission came to Rome in an unscheduled session to voice their concern about Barros.

O'Malley subsequently told the pope that the Vatican must come up with "appropriate procedures and modalities to evaluate and adjudicate cases of 'abuse of office'" when bishops fail to protect children.

April 21, 2015

The Obama administration released a report Tuesday calling for billions of dollars to “modernize” and “transform” the nation’s energy infrastructure to adapt to modern circumstances.

The plan comes from the key findings in the first installment of the Energy Department’s first“Quadrennial Energy Review,” which it hopes to write every four years.

The report describes a system of energy transportation, storage and distribution that is largely based on decades-old principles. Vice President Biden and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz are traveling to Philadelphia to speak at Peco Energy Co., a local utility, and promote the report and its recommendations.Federal officials complain in the 348-page report that the energy infrastructure system does not fit into current needs regarding domestic energy production, renewable energy, resilience needs, climate change and international security, among other concerns.

The report highlights domestic energy changes, the moving balance of imports and exports, renewable energy shifts and greenhouse gas reduction as some of the top changes that have happened in the last decade regarding energy.

“The United States has the most advanced energy systems in the world, supplying the reliable, affordable and increasingly clean power and fuels that underpin every facet of our nation’s economy,” the White House said in unveiling the report.

“But our energy landscape is changing dramatically. Solar electricity generation has increased 20-fold since 2008, and electricity generation from wind energy has more than tripled,” it said. “During that period, the United States has also become the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas combined.”

The Obama administration is asking in the report for billions of dollars to upgrade the “resilience, reliability, safety and security” of energy infrastructure.

It says it would cost up to $3.5 billion over 10 years to replace natural gas pipelines and improve maintenance.

The Energy Department also wants to spend up to $5 billion to support state “energy assurance” pipeline programs, to help them protect their energy infrastructure from various threats.

The administration calls for nearly $4 billion to modernize the electrical grid, as well as $2 billion to promote carbon dioxide capture and sequestration, along with pipelines to move the gas.

April 21, 2014

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is questioning whether donations are her family foundation is undercutting Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s message on the campaign trail.

“I think it's going to destroy her message because I think it's going to be hard for her to go around saying she's going to be a champion of women's rights when she's taking money from countries that abuse women's rights,” Paul, who is running for the GOP nomination, said late Monday on Fox News’s “Hannity.”

“In Brunei, for example, the punishment for adultery is death by stoning.”

Paul also told Hannity that he’s been briefed by Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, which questions Clinton’s conduct in light of certain donations. Paul called the new book’s contents “alarming.”

“It reminds me of people using the system to enrich themselves, and I think it looks unseemly. And I think a lot of Americans are going to agree with me,” he charged.

“That's what voters are going to have to look at and wonder: Can we trust someone to be the president of the United States who's involved with so much money changing hands from foreign countries, foreign entities?" he asked.

Clinton has been dogged by two major questions regarding donations to the Clinton Foundation: did contributions influence her decision making while secretary of State and should the foundation have accepted money from countries that had questionable human rights records.

Schweizer writes that his book details “a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” according to The New York Times. Those charges include payments by a shareholder in the Keystone XL pipeline as State weighed the pipeline’s future and a shift in U.S.- Colombian trade policy that allegedly benefited a major foundation donor.

Correct the Record, a Democratic rapid-response group that backs Clinton, bashed its findings in a statement, calling it a “political hatchet job masquerading as a book” and framing it as another “anti-Clinton conspiracy theor[y]” that will be debunked.

“The Clinton Foundation is a philanthropic organization that funds programs to help people throughout this great nation and all over the world,” Correct the Record’s communications director Adrienne Watson said in a statement, noting that Schweizer has ties to a number of Republican politicians.

“If Rand Paul and Marco Rubio think attacking the Foundation for its work to stop the AIDS epidemic in Africa is an electoral strategy, then bring it on.”

While Hillary Clinton hasn't addressed the controversy in significant detail, President Clinton pushed back on accusations of impropriety at a speech March. He framed the donations as essential to the foundation's humanitarian efforts and said that disclosure should quell concerns.

“You got to decide when you do this work whether it will do more good than harm if someone helps you from another country,” he said, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“My theory about all this is disclose everything and then let people make their judgments.”

April 21, 2015

Anna Galland is on the front lines of the progressive battle to move the Democratic Party — and Hillary Clinton — to the left ahead of 2016. As executive director of the progressive powerhouse MoveOn.org Civic Action, she helps oversee the strategy for activating the more than 8 million members in the MoveOn.org network. While MoveOn.org first gained prominence for its opposition to the Iraq War during the George W. Bush administration, Galland has since helped transform the group into one of the major liberal organizations shaping progressive policy. Hot on its to-do list is blocking President Obama’s trade policy, which liberals say would put U.S. workers in competition with low-wage workers overseas and benefit large corporations. The administration vehemently refutes Galland’s allegations, insisting that Obama’s effort to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will help boost economic growth by creating a 12-nation economic agreement. “This is going to be our signature fight for this year,” Galland said in an interview with The Hill. “Our members strongly oppose TPP and they’re horrified by the way it empowers giant corporations.” Galland said that her members are “concerned about corporate power and democracy.” “This seems like a direct expansion of that,” she said. “This is a battle we can win.  It’s going to come down to Democrats listening to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. We need to convince them that we’re the future of the party.” Galland’s brand of progressive politics is similar to that of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Both frequently chastise Wall Street and big business, insisting that the financial system is tilted against  the interests of average Americans. Despite Warren’s insistence that she will not challenge Clinton in a 2016 Democratic primary, Galland is still helping to orchestrate a million dollar campaign dubbed “Run Warren Run” to draft her. “We’re calling for a genuinely contested primary,” she said. “It’s clear to any observer that the energy and the passion in the Democratic Party right now is highest in the progressive flank.” She said that Warren’s entering the race would “ensure we have the real contest we need.” “We 100 percent take Sen. Warren at her word that she’s not planning to run,” Galland said. “Our work in the campaign is to convey to her the intensity and the breadth of support for her message.” Galland insists that her draft effort is already having an effect in shaping the 2016 presidential cycle. While she said members were “excited” to see Clinton jump into the race, she said the group would  “listen to our members as we go through the [2016] process to see where they are” should Clinton become the nominee. “It’s very early in the process,” she said. “Right now we’re most focused on our draft effort.”

Galland and her team have also helped reverberate Warren’s message to the progressive grassroots community. 

While MoveOn.org first arrived on the political landscape taking on dominant issues such as the Iraq War, it has since also targeted some of Washington’s inner workings. For example, MoveOn.org was instrumental in helping derail investment banker Antonio Weiss’s nomination in January as Obama’s No. 3 official at the Treasury Department — a nomination Warren vehemently opposed.

Galland is based out of Ann Arbor, Mich., where she lives with her husband, University of Michigan political science lecturer Chris Skeaff, and her twin preschoolers. But she travels to D.C. regularly. “It’s always been an important aspect of our identity to be grounded in communities around the country,” she said. “We don’t have a physical central office,” she said. “We’re in something like a dozen different offices. It’s important that we as an organization don’t limit ourselves to the conventional wisdom in Washington.” Galland joined MoveOn.org in 2007 and ascended to her position in 2012. She credits her “liberal minded family” for her passion for progressive politics. 

Her grandmother Marion Galland was elected to the Virginia Legislature, canvassing voters and fighting for school integration. Her father, George F. Galland Jr., is a civil rights lawyer in Chicago. “I ended up getting involved in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,” she said.

April 21, 2015

A proposed California ballot measure that would authorize the killing of gays and lesbians infuriated one woman so much that she filed her own measure with the state attorney general's office: the "Intolerant Jackass Act." The proposed ballot measure — yes, that is its actual name — by Woodland Hills author and activist Charlotte Laws would require anyone who proposes measures calling for the death of gay people to attend monthly sensitivity training and to donate $5,000 to "a pro-gay or pro-lesbian organization." Laws' proposal is directly aimed at the so-called Sodomite Suppression Act, a proposed initiative by Huntington Beach attorney Matthew McLaughlin that authorizes the killing of gay people by "bullets to the head" or "any other convenient method." "It was done as a statement to make fun of Mr. McLaughlin," Laws said of her proposal. "I wanted the world to see that California is a very open-minded state and that he is a lone voice, a minority voice, and that my 'Intolerant Jackass Act' actually reflects the sentiments of Californians." McLaughlin has avoided the media since his initiative was made public. Calls to a phone number listed for him with the State Bar of California went straight to voicemail Monday.

McLaughlin's proposal has tested the limits of California's normally liberal attitude of putting even the most extreme ideas on the ballot if enough signatures are collected.

For a fee of $200, McLaughlin submitted his proposal to Attorney General Kamala Harris' office, which is required by state law to give all proposed ballot measures a formal name and summary before the signature-gathering process begins.

To get on the November 2016 ballot, McLaughlin and any supporters he has would have to collect more than 365,000 signatures in 180 days — a high bar even for well-financed efforts. Last month, Harris asked for a court order allowing her to halt the measure, saying it was both "reprehensible" and unconstitutional. Harris filed an action for declaratory relief with the Sacramento County Superior Court, her office said.

The action is pending before the court and a hearing date has not been set yet, Kristin Ford, a spokeswoman for Harris, said Monday. The attorney general's office will not be advancing McLaughlin's proposal to the signature-gathering process while the matter is pending before the court, Ford said.

Laws said she was shocked by McLaughlin's proposal, even though it is considered to be an incredible long shot. When she learned any California citizen could submit a ballot proposal for the $200 fee, she decided to take a stand and file her own, she said.

Laws' submitted initiative says the "abominable crime known as prejudice against sexual orientation ... is a destructive view that society commands us to suppress," and refers to people who bring forth ballot proposals like McLaughlin's as "Intolerant Jackasses."

It would require anyone who brings forth such a proposed measure to attend three hours of sensitivity training per month for a year. Unlike some lawmakers who have proposed increasing the fee for filing ballot measures in response to McLaughlin's proposal, Laws said she was happy it was relatively inexpensive for citizens to file measures — and responses like hers.

"I'm not saying the initiative process is perfect ... but the people of California are intelligent; they aren't going to pass something like this absurd proposal," Laws said of McLaughlin's submission.

Laws said her proposal is just a statement and that she does not intend for it to move forward — though several people have called her saying they would be willing to gather signatures.

"Obviously, mine isn't constitutional either," she said of her proposal.

Laws said she might circulate the measure for signatures if a "huge contingent of Californians agreed with Matt McLaughlin," but that she thinks "he might be the only guy in the entire state who thinks that way."

Not much is known about McLaughlin, whose listed address with the state bar is a postal box at a strip mall in Huntington Beach. An online petition at change.org calling for McLaughlin to be disbarred had collected more than 132,000 signatures as of Monday.

April 21, 2015

Michele Bachmann says the rapture is coming, thanks to President Barack Obama’s policies on Iran’s nuclear program and marriage equality.

In a radio interview last week, Bachmann, the former Minnesota Republican congresswoman, told "End Times" host Jan Markell, “We need to realize how close this clock is getting to the midnight hour.”

“We in our lifetimes potentially could see Jesus Christ returning to earth and the rapture of the church,” Bachmann said. “We see the destruction, but this was a destruction that was foretold.”

Bachmann cited the Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran as a cause. The U.S. and five partner nations are discussing a deal with Iran that would prevent the country from developing or obtaining nuclear weapons.
“We are literally watching, month by month, the speed move up to a level we’ve never seen before with these events," Bachmann said. "Barack Obama is intent. It is his number one goal to ensure that Iran has a nuclear weapon.” 
Later in the interview, Bachmann again tied her rapture prediction to Obama’s foreign policy.

“If you look at the president’s rhetoric, and if you look at his actions, everything he has done has been to cut the legs out of Israel and lift up the agenda of radical Islam,” she said.

Obama has said repeatedly that the goal of the nuclear talks with Iran is to prevent the country from developing a nuclear weapon.

Bachmann also blamed abortion and gay marriage, arguing that God is punishing the United States for “embracing a pagan view.”

“Any nation that accepts God and his principles is blessed, and those who push away are cursed. That’s what we’re seeing happen to the United States,” she said. “We will suffer the consequences as a result.”

Some Christians believe those who are saved will be transported to heaven just before armageddon, which they call the rapture.

This is not the first time Bachmann has predicted extreme consequences from the Iran deal.Earlier this month, she claimed the deal would lead to "World War III." And in a Facebook post, she compared Obama to Andreas Lubitz, the pilot who crashed the Germanwings airliner into the French Alps in March.

April 21, 2015

The U.S. Navy has seven combat ships in the waters around Yemen as the Saudi-led bombing campaign there continues, but U.S. troops are not participating in a Saudi naval blockade in the region, U.S. military officials said Friday.

The American ships include: the destroyers USS Forrest Sherman and USS Winston Churchill; the minesweepers USS Sentry and USS Dextrous; and three amphibious ships carrying about 2,200 Marines, the USS Iwo Jima, the USS New York and the USS Fort McHenry, a Navy official told The Washington Post. The USNS Charles Drew, a dry cargo ship, is also in the region.

The Navy regularly patrols the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea around Yemen, but the ships there now are deployed at a sensitive time with the Saudi Navy blocking deliveries to Yemen’s ports. The Saudis began the operation last month in an apparent attempt to stop Houthi rebels in Yemen from re-arming.

Iran, which has been accused of arming the rebels, responded by sending navy vessels of its own into the region this week. The ships are said to be positioned in the Bab al-Mandab strait, the narrow stretch of water between Yemen and Djibouti that connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the United States had expanded its role at sea around Yemen, searching vessels for Iranian arms bound for the rebels. But Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, downplayed the effort on Friday, saying the United States is not a part of the Saudi-led blockade and is simply patrolling waters in the region the way it usually does.

Lt. Timothy Hawkins, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, said the service has not boarded a ship in the region since April 1, when troops from the USS Sterett, a destroyer, boarded the Panamanian-flagged ship Saisaban. It was suspected to be carrying weapons from Iran to Yemen, but nothing was found.

The United States routinely searches ships in the region. In one 2013 example, Force Reconnaissance Marines with a maritime raid force boarded a ship looking for an insurgent leader off the coast of Yemen. They didn’t find him, but their commanding officer said the Navy often looked for weapons smuggling on small ships known as dhows.

April 21, 2015

A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and a guided-missile cruiser are steaming toward Yemen from the Persian Gulf, as war there continues to increase tensions in the region.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt, the carrier, and the guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy have made it through the Strait of Hormuz and is moving through the Arabian Sea toward Yemen, Navy officials said. They will join seven other U.S. combat ships and three Navy resupply ships off the coast of Yemen. The move also shifts the Theodore Roosevelt away from Iraq and Syria, where its planes have carried out airstrikes.

The Navy sent the additional ships to ensure that vital shipping lanes in the region remain safe and open, accordin to a Pentagon statement. The Navy patrols the region regularly, but is there in force now just as the Saudi Navy has blocked deliveries to Yemen’s ports in an effort to make sure that Houthi rebels in the country cannot re-supply.

Iran, which has been accused of arming the rebels, sent navy vessels of its own into the region this week. The ships are said to be positioned in the Bab al-Mandab strait, the narrow stretch of water between Yemen and Djibouti that connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The U.S. ships are preparing to intercept Iranian ships carrying arms, USA Today reported Monday, citing an anonymous defense official, but Reuters, quoting Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, denying that the ships were sent to block arms from Iran. The Navy has long patrolled the waters looking for weapons smugglers, but Lt. Timothy Hawkins, a Navy spokesman, told The Washington Post that U.S. troops have not boarded another ship in the region looking for weapons since April 1.

The other U.S. combat ships near Yemen are: the destroyers USS Forrest Sherman and USS Winston Churchill; the minesweepers USS Sentry and USS Dextrous; and three amphibious ships carrying about 2,200 Marines, the USS Iwo Jima, the USS New York and the USS Fort McHenry. The USNS Charles Drew, the USNS Laramie and the USNS Arctic also are nearby.

April 21, 2015

Princess Diana died almost 18 years ago, but her final wishes were never known publicly… until now.

A new British website called Probate Search has revealed not only Diana's will, but 41 million other wills dating back to 1858. Diana's will, naturally, is among the most interesting.

According to the "Today" show, Diana left close to $30 million to her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. She also instructed that her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, should be consulted about the boys’ education in the event of her death.

"She wanted to make sure [her children] were showered with love,'' Robert Jobson, author of "The New Royal Family,'' told "Today." "That's something she really agonized over when she split from Prince Charles. I think this will reflects that.''

Diana and Prince Charles divorced in 1996 when both William and Harry were teenagers.

Diana's iconic wedding dress, which features thousands of pearls and a 25-foot train, was also left to her sons. Other items, including paintings and a clock, were bequeathed to Diana's 17 godchildren. Her will also instructed that $80,000 tax-free should be left to her butler and confidant, Paul Burrell.

The new British site also features wills from other famous Brit's, including Winston Churchill and George Orwell. The site requires a subscription fee of $15.

April 14, 2015

WASHINGTON — Tough new net neutrality regulations were published in the Federal Register on Monday, triggering an effective date of June 12 and the first formal legal challenge to the controversial online traffic rules. US Telecom, a trade group whose members include AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., filed a lawsuit Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to stop the rules.

The Federal Communications Commission approved the regulations by a 3-2 vote on Feb. 26. They change the legal classification of wired and wireless broadband, treating it as a more highly regulated telecommunications service in an attempt to ensure that providers don't discriminate against any legal content flowing through their networks to consumers. The 400-page order was made public two weeks after the vote as the FCC posted it on the agency's website. The order's publication in the Federal Register, which generally takes a few weeks after new regulations are adopted, started a 60-day clock on its effective date — unless a court blocks them. But FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who pushed for the regulations, has been optimistic they would withstand a legal challenge. "As Chairman Wheeler has said, we are confident the FCC's new open Internet rules will be upheld by the courts, ensuring enforceable protections for consumers and innovators online," agency spokeswoman Kim Hart said Monday. Supporters of the rules, which prohibit Internet service providers from blocking, slowing or selling priority delivery of content to consumers, cheered the approaching effective date.

"The publication of the rules brings us one step closer to having the enforceable net neutrality protections that millions of Americans have called for," said Matt Wood, policy director for Free Press, a digital rights group. "And yet phone and cable companies are still scheming to overturn these freedoms."

The publication meant the order formally could be challenged in court — and it didn't take long. US Telecom filed suit, arguing the rules are "arbitrary and capricious" and violate federal law. The group's members support the goals of the regulations, to ensure the free flow of legal online content, US Telecom President Walter McCormick said. The suit was filed because the more stringent government oversight that comes with broadband's new regulatory classification will hinder investment in expanded networks and increase costs for users, he said.

"Reclassifying broadband Internet access as a public utility reverses decades of established legal precedent at the FCC and upheld by the Supreme Court," McCormick said. "History has shown that common carrier regulation slows innovation, chills investment, and leads to increased costs on consumers."

US Telecom filed a petition with the court last month as a placeholder for a lawsuit, seeking to preserve the right to sue. The group was concerned that the posting of the rules on the FCC website on March 12 might have triggered a 10-day period to challenge them. More suits are expected. A similar petition was filed last month in the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans by Alamo Broadband Inc., a small Internet service provider based in Elmendorf, Texas.

April 14, 2015

In the early hours of February 17, three schoolgirls from east London slipped out of their parents’ homes, made the trek to Gatwick airport and caught a flight to Istanbul. Shamima Begum, 15, Amira Abase, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, waited 18 hours at a Turkish bus station before crossing the border into Syria, having been lured to the conflict zone by the Islamic State, the group commonly known as ISIS. And they aren’t alone. According to recent estimates, roughly 20,000 foreigners have joined the conflict in Iraq and Syria. Of those, 3,400 are from the West and many are young Muslims. Analysts largelycredit ISIS’s elaborate social media campaign for the recruitment effort. Begum, for one, had communicated online with an ISIS recruiter before leaving for Syria.

Thinks tanks, technology companies and government entities have all strived to better understand and counter ISIS’s digital strategy, with limited success. But one group sees hope in a method that hasn’t yet been tried: building more networking tools for the Muslim community. Affinis Labs, an incubator for startups, was co-founded by Shahed Amanullah, a self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur and former senior advisor for technology at the State Department, and Quintan Wiktorowicz, former senior director for community partnerships at the White House National Security Council. Its mission is to aggregate talented Muslim entrepreneurs to generate not-for-profit initiatives and full-fledged businesses that serve their community. Extremism is one of the more immediate social problems Affinis Labs wishes to address. “Part of the reason [ISIS’s campaign] is so effective is because it is organic, it’s from the audience that it is going after,” said Amanullah. “These young people understand youth frustration, they understand the fascination with violence, and they understand that the imagery and graphics that you see in Hollywood will attract these people.” Affinis Labs’s ideas spring from hackathons, which are held in venues around the world, from Abu Dhabi to Australia. At each event, participants are given a problem, such as how to make traditional Islamic scholarship relevant to the Twitter generation, and have three to four hours to come up with actionable solutions. The best of those ideas will receive help from Affinis Labs. So far, the incubator is working with two initiatives aimed at combating ISIS. The first is called One 2 One—an app to help identify people using overtly extremist rhetoric or imagery on social media. Young Muslims who are specially trained to counsel their peers can download the app, be connected to people supporting ISIS online and “talk them down from the ledge,” so to speak. “We’re looking for young Muslims who think they can get into that space and build a trusted relationship,” says Amanullah.

The second initiative is a website called “Come Back 2 Us,” which seeks to provide an underground railroad for people wishing to return home after joining ISIS. The site allows friends and family members to post messages to their loved ones abroad, in the hope the messages will trigger emotional responses. If foreign fighters change their minds about having joined ISIS, they will be able to click a panic button and provide information that will be sent to government contacts who can help them return home safely. Although the site is completely coded, there are a few kinks that need to be worked out before it goes live, none of which are technical. The creators want to make sure that the family members and friends are not targeted for posting on the site. Moreover, they want government guarantees that the fighters won’t be automatically locked up once they return. Denmark is trying its hand at rehabilitation programs for those returning from fighting alongside ISIS, while the Netherlands has either barred them from the country or forced them to wear tracking ankle bracelets. The U.S. doesn’t have a clear policy. Affinis Labs will wait for government assurance before activating the site in a country. “We can't convince them to come back when they will just go to jail,” says Amanullah. “And I don’t think we need to consign them to death or lifetime in jail because they made a stupid mistake.” If anything, the returned fighters could be an asset, he argues—they could warn their peers about the dangers of joining.

While the founders of Affinis Labs view Westerners joining ISIS as an issue in and of itself, they also see it as a symptom of a deeper-rooted problem. “I think a big reason young Muslims are vulnerable [to recruitment],” Amanullah says, “is because no one is defining their identity for them.… On one side you have ISIS using these simple, slick messages and on the other side you have clerics who stare into the camera and drone on for an hour. And one clearly resonates with young people and one clearly doesn’t.” Amanullah has spent much of his career building startups that target Muslims and carving out an online space for the community. Among his successes are Zabiha.com. 

April 14, 2015

The US and China are going to try to work together to take on cyber criminals. The Department of Homeland Security says that the US and China "intend to establish cyber discussions" on the path to reestablishing full government-to-government cyber security discussions. The DHS and China's Ministry of Public Sector agreed to focus on cross border cyber-enabled crimes like money laundering and online child sexual exploitation. The renewed interest in cooperation is the result of DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson's visit to Beijing.

As The Hill notes, cyber security talks between the two nations have become pretty awkward after the DOJ charged five members of the Chinese military for cyber espionage in May 2014. The year before, China accused the US of constantly hacking its defense sites. While the move to reopen cyber security discussions between the two nations will probably do little to curb state-sponsored espionage hacking, an open dialog could help squelch some of the more nefarious cyber criminals out there.

Department of Homeland Security

April 14, 2015

Photographer and filmmaker Suzanne Heintz became a viral hit when her photo series “Life Once Removed” -- satirical portraits of one women with a family of mannequins -- gainedmedia popularity in 2014. But the very tools that were making her famous -- Facebook, YouTube and many others -- were also making her uncomfortable by cluttering her work with banner and pre-roll ads that didn’t pay her a dime. "I don’t want my viewers to be distracted by 1,000 different ads and trying to click them away, and I don’t want other people controlling who I can and cannot reach based on clicks,” Heintz said in an interview. Enter WeAre8, which is pitching celebrities and artists -- including Heintz -- on a new social network that puts them in control over the advertising and hands over 80 percent of the revenue. The startup, with $4.5 million in funding and support from celebrities like Usher, Jamie Oliver and Shepard Fairey, launched in invite-only beta on March 12. Since the Wall Street Journal reported the debut, the site has been building its content with a mix of 250 celebrities and advertisers creating content.

It is akin to Tidal, Jay Z’s music streaming service, in that both are attempting a reset in the way content creators are compensated. WeAre8 plans to release the site out of beta in April and have its advertising system launched in May. “We’re giving you a beautiful storytelling frame and helping you drive and build an audience. We will help you make money with everything you’re doing,” WeAre8 co-founder Sue Fennessy said.

Heintz said she is abandoning YouTube, where partners make about 55 percent of revenueand have limited control over advertisers. “What I like about 8 is it seems to be fair and equitable,” Heintz said. “It hasn’t been proven so I don’t know how much I can make yet, but it’s certainly in my favor to be able to connect visually as well as vocally.”

In addition to creating content profiles, users on WeAre8 will build advertising profiles where they describe interests and can blacklist any brands. A peer-to-peer method will connect companies and creators and provide an online method to negotiate deals, similar to AngelList for investors and startups. If creators wish to play a less active role, they can choose for WeAre8 to negotiate. “When people accept ads from brands or artists on this platform, they are effectively becoming ambassadors in an authentic way. The relationship becomes real and respectful,” said Shepard Fairey, famed graphic designer and WeAre8 launch partner. This bolstered relationship between the advertiser and the creator attracted Boris Jordan, president and CEO of The Sputnik Group, to lead the company’s seed round. While the peer-to-peer model can require more effort on the advertiser than simply buying into Google or Facebook ad space, Jordan said he sees great benefits in WeAre8 such as the site’s analytics.

Fennessy also runs Standard Media Index, which provides a backend data system for many top media companies, and is using that to power WeAre8. Along with Fennessy’s 20 years of advertising experience, co-founder Beth Haggerty brings knowledge in building and growing a social network. Launched in 2008, Haggerty’s Ology gained attention forconversations on shared interests, namely cult television shows, and reached 30 million users before it was sold to an unnamed California company.

A version of Fennessy's and Haggerty's fair revenue sharing model has been tried. Tsu, a social network promoted by rapper 50 Cent, launched with a similar mission in October, attracting a million users in five weeks. The site is still active, though some have declared it as just hype. “Tsu is dead." 

April 14, 2015

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — The white South Carolina police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of a black man can be heard telling his supervisor twice that he didn't understand why the man ran away, according to dashcam video. That officer, Michael Slager, in is jail and has been fired in the wake of the April 4 shooting death of Walter Scott, 50, who was buried over the weekend. The shooting happened after Slager pulled Scott over for what the officer said was a broken taillight on his Mercedes.

Scott was behind some $18,000 in his child support payments, and family members have said he may have run because he was worried about going back to jail. A warrant had been issued for his arrest. The shooting was captured on a cellphone camera by a man passing by and became the latest example nationally of an unarmed black man shot by a white police officer, further stirring outrage. The shooting was not captured by Slager's dashboard camera, which shows what appears to be a routine traffic stop until Scott takes off running. But the cellphone video shows Slager firing eight times at Scott. SLED has released almost 13 hours of dashcam video from the cruisers of the five officers who responded to the scene.

State Law Enforcement Division spokesman Thom Berry said Monday that the actions of all North Charleston officers at the scene are being reviewed. Any findings will be forwarded to a local prosecutor. On one video, Slager can be heard answering a call on his cellphone.

"Everything's OK, OK?" he tells the caller. "I just shot somebody."

He also tells the caller: "He grabbed my Taser, yeah. He was running from me." The officer initially said after the shooting that Scott had tried to take his Taser, and the man who recorded the shooting on his cellphone said he started recording after noticing a scuffle. Slager can later be heard on the video talking to an officer Berry identified as his supervisor.

"I'm sure SLED will be on the way," the supervisor says. "Once they get here, it will be real quick. They're going to tell you you'll be off a couple of days, we'll come back and interview you. They're not going to ask you any questions right now. They'll take your weapon and we'll go from there."

The supervisor suggests to Slager, "When you get home it would probably be a good idea to kind of jot down your thoughts on what happened — the adrenalin is just pumping."

"It's pumping," Slager responds, and they both laugh.

Then there is a pause for a few seconds, and Slager speaks again, softly:

"I don't understand why he took off like that." Another short pause.

"I don't understand why he'd run."

On Monday a small group of protesters blocked a main avenue in North Charleston and the entrance to City Hall. Attorney Malik Shabazz, the president of Black Lawyers for Justice, also appeared in front of City Hall, calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the incident. He said his group will do its own investigation and hold a national town hall meeting next weekend on race and police practices.Black Lawyers for Justice has brought a $40 million lawsuit alleging Ferguson, Missouri, and St. Louis County used excessive force and falsely arrested innocent bystanders to quell widespread unrest after the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old man by a white police officer last year. Shabazz said whether a lawsuit is brought in South Carolina depends on what his investigation turns up.

April 14, 2015

There is no question that Donna Lou Rayhons had severe Alzheimer’s.

In the days before being placed in a nursing home in Garner, Iowa, last year, Mrs. Rayhons, 78, could not recall her daughters’ names or how to eat a hamburger. One day, she tried to wash her hands in the toilet of a restaurant bathroom. But another question has become the crux of an extraordinary criminal case unfolding this week in an Iowa courtroom: Was Mrs. Rayhons able to consent to sex with her husband? Henry Rayhons, 78, has been charged with third-degree felony sexual abuse, accused of having sex with his wife in a nursing home on May 23, 2014, eight days after staff members there told him they believed she was mentally unable to agree to sex. It is rare, possibly unprecedented, for such circumstances to prompt criminal charges. Mr. Rayhons, a nine-term Republican state legislator, decided not to seek another term after his arrest. There is no allegation that Mrs. Rayhons resisted or showed signs of abuse. And it is widely agreed that the Rayhonses had a loving, affectionate relationship, having married in 2007 after each had been widowed. They met while singing in a church choir. The case pivots on longstanding medical and ethical concerns that will become only more pressing as the population ages and rates of dementia rise. How can anyone determine whether a person with dementia can say yes to sex? Who has the right to decide? “It really is a huge issue, and somewhere down the line we’re going to have to confront it,” said Derek Beeston, a social work professor at Staffordshire University in England who has studied sex and dementia. Mrs. Rayhons, who died in August, was placed in the Concord Care Center in March 2014, soon after one of her daughters, Linda Dunshee, was called to pick her up at the Iowa State Capitol, where Mr. Rayhons was working. Ms. Dunshee found her mother wearing lingerie and unzipped pants under her coat. Details about the case come from interviews, court records and news media reports. At the care center, Mr. Rayhons, a corn and soybean farmer, visited his wife morning and evening, sometimes praying the rosary by her bed. But documents and interviews suggest he opposed some staff recommendations, including limiting outside trips, like attending a friend’s funeral at an unfamiliar church.

Michelle Dornbier, a social worker at the center, and Dr. John Boedeker, Mrs. Rayhons’s family doctor, testified on Friday about her scores on a test to assess memory and orientation. In May 2014, she scored zero, unable to recall the words “sock,” “bed” and “blue.” But Ms. Dornbier acknowledged that Mrs. Rayhons “was always pleased to see Henry.” And Dr. Boedeker acknowledged that “intimacy is beneficial for dementia patients.” Ms. Dornbier testified that the Concord Care Center allows consensual sex between residents. But she said that on May 15, 2014, family members including Mr. Rayhons were given a “care plan” establishing simple routines for Mrs. Rayhons, including limiting outings with Mr. Rayhons, mostly to church on Sunday. 

Ms. Dornbier, prompted by what she called concerns from Mrs. Rayhons’s daughter Suzan Brunes, that Mr. Rayhons was engaging in inappropriate sexual contact, wrote at the bottom of the plan: “Given Donna’s cognitive state, do you feel she is able to give consent for any sexual activity?”

The center’s doctor, Dr. John Brady, wrote: “No.” Mr. Rayhons was told the recommendation against having sex and indicated it would not be a problem, according to Ms. Dunshee. On May 23, Mrs. Rayhons was moved from a private room to a double. That evening, her roommate reported that Mr. Rayhons drew the curtain around his wife’s bed and that sexual noises were heard. Later a security camera recorded Mr. Rayhons dropping his wife’s underwear into a hallway laundry bag after leaving her room.

April 14, 2015

North Korea's first lady has appeared in public for the first time this year as part of celebrations marking the birthday of the country's founding leader Kim Il-Sung, state media said Tuesday. A grinning Ri Sol-Ju, wearing what appeared to be a wedding ring on her left hand, was pictured clapping next to her smiling husband Kim Jong-Un during a men's football match at Kim Il Sung Stadium on Monday, the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

The images of the couple at a podium flanked by top party officials were published in state media. The match was being held as part of a lavish series of events celebrating the 103rd birthday of Kim Il-Sung, the young leader's grandfather, which falls on Wednesday.

North Korea designates the "Day of the Sun" as a rare two-day national holiday, with art performances, exhibitions and sporting events, and pilgrimages to the late leader's birthplace in Pyongyang.

A former member of the North's Unhasu Orchestra, Ri was last seen in public in December 2014, when she and her husband attended a ceremony to commemorate the third anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-Un's father, Kim Jong-Il.

Their marriage was only revealed in July 2012 when pictures emerged of a young woman accompanying Kim at official events in a break from the past, when the North's first ladies were kept out of the limelight.

She was pictured wearing stylish, expensive-looking outfits and on one occasion sported what appeared to be a Christian Dior handbag, in a country plagued by chronic poverty.

But Ri has been out of the spotlight since December for unknown reasons.

The Kim dynasty has ruled the isolated state for nearly seven decades with an iron fist and pervasive personality cult.

Kim Il-Sung led North Korea from its establishment in 1948 until his death on July 8, 1994.

He was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-Il, who also ruled until his death in December 2011 when power was transferred to his son and current leader Kim Jong-Un.

KCNA said "an endless stream of people" was visiting, Mangyongdae, the birthplace of Kim Il-Sung, as the "Day of the Sun" draws near.

On Sunday more than 800 runners took place in an international marathon watched by hundreds of fans, including some 600 from abroad, as part of the celebrations.

"Attending the race were more than 600 marathon fans from dozens of countries including Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden, Finland, UK and Italy," KCNA said.

The North announced in February that the April 12 marathon would only be open to domestic runners this year, because of lingering concerns over the Ebola epidemic in west Africa.

But it last month reversed a ban on foreigners taking part in the annual run, after lifting strict travel restrictions aimed at keeping out the Ebola virus.

April 8, 2015

College kids admit to texting during class, while taking a shower and even while having sex -- even though they know the behavior is inappropriate, according to a recent Penn State study. The participants, 152 college students, responded to a 70-question survey about their personal texting habits and what they thought about the appropriateness of texting in certain situations. They were also asked to rate the social acceptability of certain texting scenarios, like, "Ashton is sending text messages while eating” or, “Sam is sending text messages while having sex,” as well as report on whether they themselves had ever texted in a similar scenario. More than a third of participants (34.4 percent) said they either sent or received more than 100 texts per day, and all of them checked their phone an average of about 16 times per hour (about every four minutes) for texts. The students also admitted to a few scenarios in which they believed texting was inappropriate, but admitted to doing something similar anyway. For example, here are a few prompts from the survey: 1. Jessie is on the phone with Casey when Jessie receives a text message from Quinn. Instead of hanging up the phone with Casey first, Jessie responds to Quinn’s text message while still talking on the phone. — 75.3 percent of participants have done this. 2. Quinn is texting during class. — 84.7 percent of participants have done this. 3. While Dee was supposed to be working, Dee sent text messages on the job. — 78.7 percent of participants have done this. 4. Morgan is sending text messages during a movie Morgan paid to see. — 70.7 percent of participants have done this.

5. Kendall is texting while feeding Kendall’s child. — 54 percent of participants have done this. 6. Sam is sending text messages while having sex. — 7.4 percent of participants have done this. What does this mean, beyond the fact that human civilization is doomed to become a horde of rude, bent-neck, mobile phone-addicts bumping into each other on the street (and in the bedroom)? We kid, we kid. But seriously, the researchers examining the texting habits of Generation Z (as they’ve been labeled so-far) question whether the survey results signal that participantstruly think certain texting scenarios are inappropriate, or are actually signaling a new standard of etiquette when it comes to mobile phones. "About 89% of participants report texting while eating, and about 83% said they have text messaged while going to the bathroom,” wrote the researchers in the study. Whereas some people may deem this odd, most college students agree that eating and toilet texts are the new normal. One reason young people seem to be permanently attached to their phones could be thatthey crave immediate hyper-connection with the people they love and care about most. But if that were true, why would participants turn to their phones for said connection, even in the midst of an in-person connection with someone they can see in the flesh? The researchers put the question this way: 

It is of interest that people choose to commit interpersonal breaches and compromise being fully, interpersonally engaged with the important people around them by connecting with others in a faceless, often incomplete, impersonal mode, even when admitting this is not the right thing to do. Investigators may want to examine why texting technology can distract and therefore detract from in-person interactions. Of course, there are caveats to this survey. The sample wasn't representative of a U.S. population, and in order to have a truly accurate picture of Gen Z's texting habits, there needs to be a comparison group of older texters. But for now, the researchers have concluded that their study reveals that rules around the etiquette of texting still exist -- it’s just that they generally don’t apply to people in the moment that they’re texting.

April 8, 2015

FERGUSON, Mo. — Two black candidates were among three people elected to the Ferguson City Council Tuesday, tripling African-American representation in the St. Louis suburb where poor race relations have been a focal point since the August shooting death of an 18-year-old black by a white police officer. The election means that half of the six-member city council in Ferguson, a town where two-thirds of the 21,000 residents are black, will now be African-American. The lone black incumbent councilman was not up for re-election. The mayor, who could break any tie votes, is white. Voter turnout increased substantially from the previous election following a strong get-out-the-vote effort from labor unions and other national organizations. The town that drew only 12.3 percent of registered voters last April had 29.4 percent turnout Tuesday, according to the St. Louis County Board of Elections. That was about double the overall turnout in St. Louis County, where Ferguson is located. Unofficial results showed that Wesley Bell defeated another black candidate to win in the 3rd Ward. Ella Jones defeated another black candidate and two white candidates in the 1st Ward. Brian Fletcher, a former mayor who is white, won a 2nd Ward race against another white candidate. "This community came out in record numbers to make sure our voices were heard," said councilman-elect Bell. "When you have a community engaged, the sky is the limit." He described it as part of a healing and rebuilding process.

It was the first municipal election in Ferguson since officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown, who was black and unarmed, on Aug. 9. The shooting sparked sometimes violent protests in the St. Louis area, and spawned a national "Black Lives Matter" movement to press for change in how police deal with local minorities.

It also prompted a review by the U.S. Justice Department, which decided not to prosecute Wilson, who resigned in November. But the federal department released a scathing report blasting the city for racial bias and profiling in the police department and a profit-driven municipal court system. Several city officials resigned following the review, including the city manager, police chief and municipal judge. The municipal court clerk was fired for racist emails. The new city council will be tasked with approving hiring of the replacements. The scrutiny in the wake of the shooting also found that the city had a mostly white police force and city leadership — the mayor also is white.

In the race for the 3rd Ward, which includes the apartment complex where Brown was killed, Bell, 40, easily defeated 76-year-old retiree Lee Smith. Bell is a lawyer and a criminology professor who had to defend himself because of a third job — municipal judge in a neighboring town of Velda City that, like Ferguson, derives a large percentage of its budget from municipal court fines. Smith had support of several national organizations whose volunteers went door-to-door on his behalf. Jones had support of a labor union and won easily in her four-person race. Fletcher, the former mayor who started the "I Love Ferguson" campaign after the unrest that ravaged the community, also won easily in the 2nd Ward.

A strong push was made after the shooting to register more black voters last year, but just 562 new voters were added to the rolls. In recent weeks, the focus has been on getting those who are registered to vote.

The high turnout came despite brutal weather. Strong storms, including lightning and heavy rain, tore through the region for several hours before noon. But the weather didn't deter Marty Einig, who has participated in Ferguson protests since August. She was voting in the 3rd Ward, which includes the Canfield Green apartment complex where Brown was fatally shot.

April 8, 2015

Likely 2016 Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has hired a Google executive to serve as her chief technology officer, overseeing the creation of websites and apps to reach out to voters, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

Clinton hired Stephanie Hannon, Google's director of product management for civic innovation and social impact, to run her technology operations, the Post said, citing Democrats with knowledge of the move.

A Clinton spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Google spokesman also did not reply.

Clinton is widely seen as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president even though she has not formally announced her candidacy. She is expected to do so this month and has signed a lease for a Brooklyn, New York, office building to house her campaign.

Likely presidential candidates from both parties are hiring digital advisors who can help them interact with voters and try new fundraising techniques.

Hannon previously worked on Google Maps and Gmail and worked shorter stints at Facebook and event organizing site Eventbrite, according to her LinkedIn profile.

April 8, 2015

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A white South Carolina police officer who claimed he killed a black man in self-defense has been fired and faces murder charges after a bystander's video recorded him firing eight shots at the man's back as he ran away. The city's mayor also said he's ordered body cameras to be worn by every single officer on the force. The officer, Michael Thomas Slager, has been fired, but the town will continue to pay for his health insurance because his wife is eight-month's pregnant, said North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey, who called it a tragedy for two families.

Police Chief Eddie Diggers said he was "sickened" by what he saw on the video, but his explanations were repeatedly interrupted by shouts of "no justice, no peace!" and other hard questions that he said he couldn't answer. The mayor then took back the podium and threatened to close the news conference. Protests began within hours of the murder charge against Slager, which was announced Tuesday, the same day the video was released to the media. About 75 people gathered outside City Hall in North Charleston, led by a Black Lives Matter, a group formed after the fatal shooting of another black man in Ferguson, Missouri.

"Eight shots in the back!" local organizer Muhiydin D'Baha hollered through a bullhorn, and the crowd yelled "In the back!" in response. The video recorded by an unidentified bystander shows North Charleston Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager dropping his stun gun, pulling out his handgun and firing at Walter Lamer Scott from a distance as he runs away. The 50-year-old man falls after the eighth shot, fired after a brief pause. The dead man's father, Walter Scott Sr. said Wednesday that the officer "looked like he was trying to kill a deer running through the woods." He also told NBC's "Today Show" that his son may have tried to flee because he owed child support and didn't want to go back to jail.

The video is "the most horrible thing I've ever seen," said Judy Scott, the slain man's mother, on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"I almost couldn't look at it to see my son running defenselessly, being shot. It just tore my heart to pieces," she said. The bystander is assisting investigators after providing the video to Scott's family and lawyers.

Deflecting many of the questions from a hostile audience at Wednesday's news conference, Summey said state investigators have the case. Police initially released a statement that promised a full investigation but relied largely on the officer's description of the confrontation, which began with a traffic stop Saturday as Slager pulled Scott over for a faulty brake light. Slager's then-attorney David Aylor released another statement Monday saying the officer felt threatened and fired because Scott was trying to grab his stun gun. Aylor dropped Slager as a client after the video surfaced, and the officer, a five-year veteran with the North Charleston police, appeared without a lawyer at his first appearance Tuesday. He was denied bond and could face 30 years to life in prison if convicted of murder. The shooting comes amid a plunge in trust between law enforcement and minorities after the officer-involved killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner on Staten Island, New York. Nationwide protests intensified after grand juries declined to indict the officers in both cases.

"We have to take a stand on stuff like this ... we can't just shake our heads at our computer screens," said Lance Braye, 23, who helped organize Wednesday's demonstration. Scott's family and their attorney, L. Chris Stewart, appealed to keep the protests peaceful, saying the swift murder charge shows that the justice system is working so far in this case.

April 7, 2015

Body armor suffers from a core tension: it must be light enough so the soldier wearing it can still fight effectively, but strong enough to actually stop bullets and shrapnel. Durable, shock-absorbing Kevlar is the current standard, but it can definitely be improved upon. What if, instead of making the armor itself aliquid, researchers borrow an armor design from creatures that move through it? A team at MIT, led by mechanical engineer Stephan Rudykh, designed a flexible armor inspired by fish scales.

Scale armor is almost as old as armor itself, with numerous examples found in ancient art from Rome to China. To improve on an ancient concept, the MIT team came up with a single metric for the armor’s value: protecto-flexibility (Ψ). This is “a new metric which captures the contrasting combination of protection and flexibility, taken as the ratio between the normalized indentation and normalized bending stiffness.” Working from a single metric, the researchers were able to greatly increase the strength of the armor while only modestly reducing its flexibility.

The practical implications of the study are hinted at by who funded it: the research “was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office through the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.” In the future, soldiers could have fish-scale suits of armor that are more flexible around joints and sturdier across the rest of the body, adding greater protection where none was before without diminishing any of the value of previous armor.

This armor is still in the early testing stages. “Flexibility and protection by design: imbricated hybrid microstructures of bio-inspired armor” only covers indentation tests, designed to see just how far the scales would bend when forced to. Next stages include trying the armor against bullets and shrapnel. If successful, the future of armor could look a heck of a lot like the past.

April 7, 2015

The power of the people is being applied to space science this month: The fourth-annual International Space Apps Challenge will let citizen scientists all over the world come up with new and creative ways to use data from space. Information collected by space probes and other space-agency instruments can be used to help expand humanity's knowledge of the cosmos, or to make life a little better here on Earth. Doing so requires not only collecting the data, but also knowing what to do with it. The 2015 International Space Apps Challenge engages nonscientists in this pursuit. In this two-day global code-a-thon taking place April 10 to 12, participants will develop mobile applications, software, hardware, data visualization tools and platforms that solve real-world problems for both scientists and the public. Astronaut Cady Coleman and NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan will be on hand at the New York City event.  "There's this huge mass of people all around the world who are incredible fans of NASA and space in general," said Sean Herron, a technologist and developer who was a member of the original NASA team that started the International Space Apps Challenge. Herron said that for years, he and his colleagues had seen citizen scientists create their own projects using NASA data, and they wanted to find a way to "tap all of this genius and bring them together, and have one big event to try and solve what we call 'problems of a global nature.'"

The International Space Apps Challenge is the result of that desire. It is open to anyone on Earth who has access to an Internet connection. Participants do not need to have any minimum knowledge level in any area, including science and coding. Participants can work in teams or alone, and are tasked with creating a product by the end of the two-day period. The products can be totally original ideas, or they can be in response to one of NASA's 35 suggested challenges. These challenges fall into four categories: Earth studies, space exploration, human health research, and robotics.

Examples of suggested challenges in the space exploration category include "3-2-1 Liftoff: Launch That Rocket!" in which designers are asked to "develop an experience that captures all the variables involved with making the launch decision."

"Visualize the Asteroid Skies" is a challenge in which participants are asked to "create data aggregators and visualizations of asteroid data in meaningful ways that can educate the public about the need to explore asteroids and protect the Earth from them."

Past entries have tackled a wide range of topics, from climate change to the International Space Station. To complete the challenge, participants will have access to more than 200 data sources, according to NASA. Apps Challenge entrants can participate remotely or attend one of the live events taking place in more than 100 cities worldwide, covering every continent except Antarctica. "The exploration of space is, by necessity, a unified international effort — and diversity of experience and perspective inevitably produces a better product," the event website reads. There are awards for the top technologies, including "Best Use of Data," "Galactic Impact" and "People's Choice." According to the event website, winners of the global awards will have the opportunity to attend a NASA launch. 

This year's Challenge will include a "Data Bootcamp," which is open to the public and will help participants improve their coding and data-handling skills. The boot camp will be live streamed online from the Space Apps "Global Mainstage," and has a "focus on Women in Data," according to a NASA statement.

April 7, 2015

Iran and the United States have irritated each other with conflicting statements made about the nuclear framework agreement reached last week in Switzerland, the lead U.S. negotiator said on Tuesday.

Wendy Sherman, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, was asked about the different interpretations of the deal intended to curb Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.

"I think we've each been irritated with each other in some of the things we've said," Sherman told MSNBC in an interview. "Even though we discussed this before we left - we understood that our narratives were likely to be somewhat different - but we pledged to try not to contradict each other."

One sticking point has been when sanctions against Iran would end: Iran has said it expected all to be suspended as soon as the agreement takes effect. The United States said they would be phased out gradually, depending on Tehran's compliance.

Despite the different narratives, Sherman said the countries are in broad agreement on the framework. She added, though, much work remains to be done to fill out details by a June 30 deadline.

Sherman has been deeply involved in talks with Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to end a decade-old standoff over Iran's nuclear program, which the West fears could lead to a nuclear bomb. Iran has denied having nuclear weapons ambitions.

She described the talks as a roller-coaster with 11th-hour moments when the negotiations looked near collapse.

"During this last round in Lausanne there were several times I think on both sides where we said, 'Well, maybe we just can't get there.' Because this is a big puzzle. All the pieces have to fit together and if that last puzzle piece doesn't lock in, you don't have a deal." 

April 7, 2015

MOSCOW, April 7 (Reuters) - A nuclear submarine caught fire in a shipyard in Russia's northern province of Arkhangelsk on Tuesday but there were no weapons on board, Russian news agencies reported.

The Emergencies Ministry declined comment on the reports of the fire at the Zvyozdochka shipyard, where the agencies said the 155-meter-long (just over 500 feet) 949 Antei submarine was being repaired. There was no word of any casualties.

"There is a fire on the submarine. We are fighting the fire now," a shipyard source told Interfax news agency.

RIA quoted a spokesperson at the shipyard as saying there were no weapons on board the submarine.

A source told TASS news agency the submarine's nuclear reactor had been shut down prior to the blaze.

"The active zone of the reactor was unloaded at the start of repairs a few years ago," the source said.

The news agency reports said the fire had started during welding, causing insulation materials to catch fire.

A similar blaze in 2011 nearly led to a nuclear disaster as a blaze engulfed a nuclear-powered submarine carrying atomic weapons, a leading Russian magazine reported months after the blaze, contradicting official assurances that it was not armed.

April 7, 2015

More than half the rivers in India are polluted, with the developing economic power unlikely to meet demand for fresh water from its still-growing population unless dramatic measures are taken, a new report by government scientists has found.

The number of rivers defined as “polluted” in India has more than doubled in the last five years, from 121 to 275, an assessment by the central pollution control board (CPCB) says.

A primary cause is the quantity of sewage generated by cities and towns along polluted stretches the CPCB’s report found.

“In view of population increase, demand for freshwater for all uses will be unmanageable,” it said. The survey, reported by the local Mail Today newspaper, will add to the pressure on the Indian government to act to protect the environment in the country of 1.2 billion. On Monday, Narendra Modi, the prime minister, blamed the changing lifestyles that have come with India’s 25 years of rapid economic development for rising pollution levels that have given the country some of the world’s dirtiest air.

Related: Indian minister promises to tackle country's acute air pollution problem

A survey released last year by the World Health Organisation (WHO) found that Delhi, the Indian capital, was the most polluted city on the planet, with an annual average of 153 micrograms of the most dangerous small particulates, known as PM2.5, per cubic metre. The level was six times the WHO’s recommended maximum, 12 times US standards and more than twice the level considered safe by Indian authorities. In all, 13 of the world’s 20 most-polluted cities were in India, according to the WHO. The country’s waterways have also suffered badly in recent years, with vast quantities of municipal and industrial waste discharged into them every day. Modi has made cleaning the Ganges, the major river that is holy to Hindus, a key policy goal. There has been little progress so far on a project which has defeated successive administrations, despite substantial funding. Ministers have said they consider clean air to be a “birthright”. Speaking at the launch of a new national air quality monitoring index, Modi also urged Indians to curtail waste and conserve resources even as they become wealthier, in order to prevent an environmental catastrophe. “Until we focus on our lifestyle and get the world to focus on it, we will not succeed despite all other measures being taken,” Modi told state environment ministers in Delhi. “It is difficult to convince the developed nations about this,” he added, saying that India should set an example. “We have given a perception to rest of the world as if we are not bothered about climate and environment. The world is tackling with the challenge of global warming, but they still haven’t been able to find a way. No one can question India’s sensitivity towards nature protection,” Modi said, and called on his compatriots to pledge that “once a week we will not use any kind of products that use any kind of energy.” India is under pressure to disclose its plans to cut green house gas emissions before UN talks from 30 November to 11 December in Paris.

Delhi has so far baulked at committing itself to major cuts, arguing that it will not set itself targets that undermine efforts to end poverty. China announced its plan to cap its emissions by about 2030 in a joint announcement with the US last November.

Experts have previously criticised Delhi’s readings as erratic and unreliable, calling for more transparency and rigour in the data. Much of India’s air pollution comes from coal-fired power plants, crop burning, domestic cooking with firewood or cow dung, and vehicles burning diesel fuel.

April 7, 2015

The Obama administration is considering the creation of a “fusion cell” of law enforcement, intelligence and other officials to better coordinate its response to hostage situations. Its mission would be to focus exclusively on developing strategies to recover American captives being held overseas.

The proposal is described in a letter sent to the families of American hostages and is one of several ideas the administration is considering as it gets closer to concluding its review of hostage policies. That review was launched in December amid frustration at the government’s response from families of American hostages, some of whom were held and later killed by the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

The new fusion cell would oversee a “whole-of-government response to hostage events,” according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. It would involve subject-matter experts from agencies including the FBI, the Defense Department, the State Department and those in the intelligence community.

Although all of those agencies already get involved when Americans are taken hostage overseas, the possible creation of a unified group underscores perceived gaps in a response that families describe as often bewildering.

Under another proposal, according to the letter, a senior-level policy group, chaired by the National Security Council staff, would review hostage policies and recovery strategies proposed by the fusion cell. That group would report to Cabinet officials and the president to “ensure sustained, high-level government-wide attention to hostage cases and policies.”

The letter does not address the U.S. ban on paying ransoms to terrorist groups — a policy that has drawn criticism from families and others, particularly in light of other countries’ willingness to pay for the release of their citizens. The administration has said it will not alter the policy, citing concerns that ransoms would reward hostage-takers and encourage them to target more Americans.

At the same time, U.S. officials have expressed an interest in finding ways to better communicate with families about efforts to recover their loved ones. The letter says the administration is considering establishing a “family engagement team” to ensure that families have continuous, direct access to officials who can provide “timely information and other necessary support during and after a hostage crisis.”

Some families have said that support was lacking in their cases.

Sara Berg, the sister of Nick Berg, an American contractor who was kidnapped and killed in Iraq in 2004, said she did not know what had happened to her brother until a video surfaced online depicting his beheading.

Sara Berg, one of dozens of family members interviewed as part of the administration’s review, said she thought the letter sent by the administration reflected its interest in “consensus-making and being open to input.” That, she said, “is very positive.”

U.S. officials, according to the letter, hope to meet in person with families in May to solicit their feedback on the review.

“We have heard concerns expressed by some family members about their interaction and communication with U.S. government officials and the amount of information that can be shared,” said Kathleen C. Butler, a spokeswoman in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “We have spoken with 22 families, provided them with updates on the review, and sought their feedback on an initial set of proposals.”

April 7, 2015

Federal authorities are investigating a possible pesticide poisoning that left two Delaware boys in comas after a family vacation to the U.S. Virgin Islands last month, U.S. officials confirmed on Monday.

The boys and their parents, Stephen Esmond and Theresa Devine had to be airlifted to hospital after falling ill during a stay at the luxury Sirenusa resort in Cruz Bay, St. John, according to the family's lawyer, James Maron.

Two weeks after the incident the boys, both minors, remain in critical condition due to "this unthinkable tragedy," Maron said in a statement. Their mother has been released from hospital and Esmond "is improving and stable," he said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday that preliminary results confirmed the presence at their rented unit of methyl bromide, a dangerous pesticide that may have caused the illnesses.

"EPA took action and the agency has conducted sampling at the site," the agency said in a statement.

The use of methyl bromide in the United States is restricted due to its acute toxicity and exposure can cause respiratory problems and damage to the central nervous system, the EPA said. "Only certified applicators are allowed to use it in certain agricultural settings and it is not authorized for use in indoor dwellings," it added.

The rental unit was directly above another unit which had been fumigated by Terminix, owned by Memphis-based ServiceMaster Global Holdings Inc, a company spokesman confirmed.

In a statement Terminix said the company was praying for the family while also "cooperating with authorities in their investigation, and we're conducting our own thorough internal investigation."

According to its website Terminix is the leading provider of termite and pest control services in the United States.

The EPA said it is working with the Virgin Islands government and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether any environmental regulations or laws were violated.

The U.S. Department of Justice has initiated a criminal investigation into the matter, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on March 30 by ServiceMaster.

"The family is confident that the responsible parties will be brought to justice and held accountable," Maron said.

April 7, 2015

Duke won the national title Monday night, thanks to the strong play of a number of freshmen, including Tyus Jones, Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow and Grayson Allen. While most of the country is impressed with the quick development of the team’s younger players, United States Senator Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, is not a fan. After watching the contest, she decided to randomly take a shot at Duke because it has players who might leave for the NBA after one year of play. Seriously.

"Congrats to Duke, but I was rooting for team who had stars that are actually going to college & not just doing semester tryout for NBA," tweeted McCaskill.

Pretty strange. I guess we know who McCaskill was rooting for every time Kentucky took the floor this year – the other team.

April 6, 2015

A German politician has told a television channel how neo-Nazis threatened to behead him if asylum seekers were allowed to move into a town in the east of the country.

German newspaper Die Welt reports that Götz Ulrich, the district coordinator of refugee accommodation for Saxony-Anhalt, told N-TV that he has been threatened with “the methods of the French Revolution” - suggesting the use of the guillotine according to a number of German media outlets - in response to plans to house 40 asylum seekers in the town of Tröglitz.

The comments follow a string of incidents involving far-right groups who are opposed to officials allowing asylum seekers to be housed in the town. Over the weekend, the property where the refugees were supposed to move into in May, burned down, rendering it uninhabitable. Police are treating the incident as a case of intentional arson.

Two people were in the property at the time, but managed to escape unharmed. Police said in a statement that they are not ruling out attempted homicide.

Ulrich said in an interview with DW today that there is a mood of “distress” in the town now.

“I believe personally that it has less to do with the people who actually live here, and far more with figures from the far-right who have chosen Tröglitz as a stage for their demonstrations,” he said.  

“It has developed into a situation in which these people are attempting to see if they can influence policy - to see if the right-wing scene has enough power to prevent the Burgenlandkreis from opening its doors to refugees.”

The town’s former mayor, Markus Nierth, resigned in March following a three-month anti-asylum campaign which culminated with a planned march that ended outside his house, according to German news website Deutch Welles (DW).

He cited fears for the security of his wife and children, who were reportedly subjected to abuse from neo-Nazis. Nierth told DW yesterday that “seeds of neo-Nazism are germinating” in the area.

Laura Schneider, a journalist at DW, told Newsweek that members of far-right parties had turned up to a public meeting in which the public, politicians and police were discussing the issue of asylum-seekers last week in Tröglitz, and verbally abused officials. She adds that the threats to Götz Ulrich, following the threats to the former mayor, appear to be part of a pattern.

“He has to decide where to locate or house a certain number of refugees. He’s the one who decided that Tröglitz could house 40 asylum seekers,” she says.

Thorbjørn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, joined a chorus of German politicians condemning the right-wing attacks.  

"Incidents like this should set off alarm bells in Europe,” he said in a statement. “Democracy is increasingly threatened by racist, xenophobic, political and religious extremism.”

“The growing atmosphere of hate and intolerance in different parts of society is very dangerous. We must fight it and fight its causes at all levels,” he concluded. 

April 6, 2015

Kenyan fighter jets have bombed positions of militant Islamist group al-Shabab in neighbouring Somalia, a military spokesman has told the BBC.

The warplanes had targeted two camps in the Gedo region, used by al-Shabab to cross into Kenya, the spokesman added.

This is Kenya's first response to an al-Shabab assault which left 148 people dead at Garissa University last week.

President Uhuru Kenyatta had vowed to respond to the attack "in the severest way possible".

Kenyan army spokesman David Obonyo told the BBC that the military had responded to "threats" by launching the air strike on Sunday night in the remote region.

No further details of the operation were available at this stage, he said.

April 6, 2015

Back in June, the Iranian national volleyball team was playing a key game against Italy in Tehran.

It was an exciting time for the Iranian team, which was knocking off global powerhouses as it played in volleyball's World League, and a group of women in Tehran wanted to join in on the fun. So they gathered outside Tehran's Azadi Indoor Stadium and requested to be let in. They weren't.

Although it's not a written rule, authorities in Iran have stopped women from entering sporting arenas for years. They argue the atmosphere in stadiums isn't suitable for women. "Fans tend to get rowdy and it's better for women to watch these games from home," they say. And they're not messing around.

Ghoncheh Ghavami, a British-Iranian woman who was one of the female fans trying to get into the volleyball game, was arrested and put in jail. She spent five months trying to clear her name. Then, after Ghavami was released on bail, the Iranian government slapped her with a 2-year travel ban.

Yet with Iran being the unpredictable place it is, there's now talk that the ban could be lifted

On Saturday, Deputy Sports Minister Abdolhamid Ahmadi spoke of a government proposal to allow women to attend live sporting events. Shahindokht Mowlaverdi, Iran's vice president for women and family affairs, also posted the news on her Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The details are still unclear. Mowlaverdi has been quoted in Iranian media saying that the lifting of the ban might be limited to some sports; women would be able to watch basketball, volleyball and tennis, but swimming, boxing and soccer would remain off-limits.

Ahmadi referred to these sports as "manly," and said allowing to watch them live would be against Iran's "cultural, social and religious sensibilities."

Still, women's rights activists are happy about the news. "It was a really euphoric moment," says Leila Mouri, who has been advocating for women's rights to watch live sports for ten years.

She says one reason the Iranian government decided to review the ban was external pressure. FIFA and its volleyball counterpart, the FIVB, have been asking Iran to let women inside stadiums. But, as Mouri points out, the international pressure was itself a response to calls from inside Iran.

"We sent several letters to the international communities for years and asked them to ask the Iranian government to let women inside stadiums as their basic rights," she says from New York, where she's based.

Mouri says she's cautiously optimistic. She knows that the proposal needs to be approved by the Parliament, and that hardliners could oppose or even kill it. And even if it passes, she says, "women are still working hard to reach their very basic rights. We still have a long way to go."

April 6, 2015

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Clemson University put the school's Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity on probation for two years after the group held a "Cripmas" party last December that had students dressed like gang members, according to a statement released Monday.

The fraternity's national organization was outraged by the Christmas-themed party that had members wearing blue and red bandanas, colors of the street gangs the Crips and Bloods, throwing up gang hand symbols and wearing T-shirts with images of the late rapper Tupac Shakur.

About two dozen students were suspended and the leaders of the local chapter, whose operations are controlled by alumni advisers, were removed.

"The decision of a few brothers to hold the type of social event they organized is inexcusable and completely inappropriate, and the entire group was sanctioned. Furthermore, their behavior in no way reflects the values and creed of the fraternity, and we apologize to campus and local community for their actions because we teach our brothers to be leaders, scholars and, most importantly, gentlemen," the national Sigma Alpha Epsilon Organization said in its statement.

Pictures of the party were posted on social media, causing backlash as black students said Clemson didn't do enough to promote racial tolerance. About 6 percent of Clemson's students are black.

The fraternity violated alcohol rules and student conduct codes, according to a brief statement by the university. The probation runs until February 2017. Clemson announced the sanctions about two months after the fraternity met with Clemson's Office of Community and Ethical Standards.

The fraternity also must complete an education program about alcohol, social justice and gangs.

A Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter at the University of Oklahoma was disbanded earlier this year after members were taped singing a racist song.

The Clemson chapter of the fraternity was suspended almost immediately after the party photos reached the Internet. The gathering came shortly after protests at the university over a grand jury's decision not to indict a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in the shooting of a black teen caused a number of anonymous racist postings on the social media app Yik Yak.

"Clemson is better than this," university president Jim Clements wrote in an email shortly after the party, adding that free expression of opinion cannot cross the line to harassment and intimidation just like protest marches can't turn into lawless riots.

Clemson has added a lecture series and a monthly luncheon to promote diversity, and Clements has vowed to spend this year reviewing how the university treats minorities and can attract a more inclusive class of students.

April 6, 2015

The day after John Oliver aired a widely discussed interview with NSA leaker Edward Snowden, officials have removed an unauthorized bust of Snowden that was apparently placed there by a group of rogue artists early Monday morning.

The bust appeared overnight at the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park, perched on top of a stone column that helps light the monument at night.

Beneath a bronze eagle directly below the newly installed bust, photos show "SNOWDEN" spelled out in large lettering.

In 2013, information leaked by Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency had eavesdropped on dozens of foreign leaders and had engaged in widespread data collection on phone logs of nearly every American.

Snowden appeared Sunday in an episode of "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver" that highlighted the issue of government-sanctioned surveillance as Congress prepares to decide whether to renew key portions of the Patriot Act.

"We're used to seeing in our visual vocabulary in society statutes, busts, memorials. We chose to pay tribute to Snowden through the medium of a bust because that is one of the visual pieces that society uses as a guidepost to who a hero is," a person claiming to be one of the artists responsible for the bust told Animal, which exclusively documented the predawn installation.

According to the publication, the piece is made of a high-quality sculpting material and was finished with a bronze patina to make it fit in among the other monument sculptures. It took about six months to sculpt, mold, cast and ship the bust to New York, Animal reported.

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, dedicated in 1908, commemorates 11,500 American POWs in the Revolutionary War who died aboard British ships.

The artists told Animal that the site holds special significance.

"We have updated this monument to highlight those who sacrifice their safety in the fight against modern-day tyrannies," the artists said in a statement to Animal. "It would be a dishonor to those memorialized here to not laud those who protect the ideals they fought for, as Edward Snowden has by bringing the NSA's 4th-Amendment-violating surveillance programs to light."

According to photos and video posted on social media sites, the illicit lettering was removed and park officials covered the unsanctioned bust with a tarp.

By 3 p.m. local time, city parks staff and police had removed the sculpture. "The erection of any unapproved structure or artwork in a city park is illegal," said Maeri Ferguson, a spokeswoman for the department.

"If this thing gets taken down right away, we'll certainly be disappointed," one of the artists told Animal. "You can rip the statue out, but you can't erase the fact that it happened, and that people are sharing it and that could inspire people to speak up in their own creative ways."

April 5, 2015

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the United States on Sunday to seek a better deal to curb Iran's nuclear program and said he would press American lawmakers not to give Tehran "a free path to the bomb."

Netanyahu said he has spoken with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress—nearly two thirds of House of Representatives members and a similar number in the U.S. Senate—about the Iran nuclear issue. The Israeli prime minister has been strongly critical of the framework agreement struck on Thursday between world powers and Iran, saying it threatens the survival of Israel. In appearances on U.S. television on Sunday, Netanyahu did not repeat his assertion on Friday that any final agreement should include a commitment by Iran recognizing Israel's right to exist.

"This is not a partisan issue. This is not solely an Israeli issue," Netanyahu said of the interim nuclear agreement, speaking on CNN's State of the Union program.

"This is a world issue because everyone is going to be threatened by the pre-eminent terrorist state of our time, keeping the infrastructure to produce not one nuclear bomb but many, many nuclear bombs down the line." Appearing on CNN, Senator Dianne Feinstein, a leading Democratic voice on foreign affairs, said she did not believe the agreement threatened Israel, and had harsh words for Netanyahu. "I don't think it's helpful for Israel to come out and oppose this one opportunity to change a major dynamic which is downhill, a downhill dynamic in this part of the world," said Feinstein. Netanyahu angered the White House and alienated some of President Barack Obama's Democrats when he accepted a Republican invitation to address Congress on March 3, two weeks before the Israeli elections that returned him to office.

Netanyahu denied he was coordinating with House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, who visited Israel last week, and with other Republicans to block the Iran deal. Israel, which is believed to be the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, says it believes Iran is committed to its destruction. The Israeli leader denounced the framework agreement between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, saying of Tehran, "They're getting a free path to the bomb."

"There's still time to get a better deal and apply pressure to Iran to roll back its nuclear program," he said on CNN. "I'm not trying to kill any deal. I'm trying to kill a bad deal," he said on NBC'sMeet the Press.

April 5, 2015

Karim Benzema hailed teammate Cristiano Ronaldo as a "phenomenon'' after the Portuguese struck five goals in Real Madrid's 9-1 mauling of Granada.

It was the first time in his career that Ronaldo has scored five goals in a single match and saw him become only the third player to reach the 300-goal mark for Madrid, a tally achieved in only 287 appearances.

On Sunday, Benzema said on his club's website: "Cristiano is a phenomenon, he is always looking for goals and ways to help the team. He deserves everything he has achieved.''

Benzema also scored twice after Gareth Bale had opening the scoring as Madrid's much-vaunted 'BBC' strikeforce combined to score eight of their side's nine goals, with the other coming from a Diego Mainz own goal.

The Frenchman added: "Him (Ronaldo), Bale and me, we're in good form, like always. We're helping the team and sometimes we score and other times we don't, but we're in good shape to continue like that until the end of the season.''

Ronaldo, meanwhile, was quick to highlight the role his teammates played in his five-goal haul as he inched closer to becoming the club's all-time record scorer.

Raul currently leads the way with 323 goals from 741 appearances while Alfredo di Stefano is second with 308 goals from 396 matches.

Ronaldo wrote on Twitter: "Happy to have scored 5 goals with this excelent team work. Thank you for all your support.''

April 5, 2015

Cristiano Ronaldo scored an eight-minute hat-trick in a five-goal individual haul as Real Madrid thrashed Primera Division strugglers Granada 9-1 at the Bernabeu on Sunday. Gareth Bale went some way to silencing his critics with the 25th-minute opener after rounding the keeper before Ronaldo took centre stage, propelling Real to a 4-0 halftime lead with strikes in the 30th, 36th and 38th minutes. A second-half flurry of three goals in four minutes saw Karim Benzema add Real's fifth in the 52nd minute before Ronaldo headed his fourth of the match soon after. Benzema slotted home his second and the hosts' seventh in the 56th minute. Robert Ibanez pulled one back for Granada in the 74th but it proved to be only a small consolation for the visitors, especially as an own goal by Diego Mainz brought Real an eighth before the irrepressible Ronaldo claimed his fifth in the last minute.

Jeremy Mathieu scored a late headed goal to give Barcelona all three points from a testing encounter at Celta Vigo. The French defender outmuscled his marker at the far post to head home Xavi's free-kick in the 75th minute, just two weeks after nodding in the opening goal in the 2-1 win over Real Madrid. Barcelona struggled for large parts of the game against coach Luis Enrique's former employers -- who were reduced to 10 men in the closing minutes as Fabian Orellana was shown a straight red card for throwing a piece of turf at Sergio Busquets -- but they stay four points clear of Madrid at the top of the Primera Division thanks to Mathieu's header. Red-hot Valencia were frustrated in their bid to reclaim third spot from Atletico Madrid as they were held to a goalless draw by local rivals Villarreal.

Los Che, looking for a seventh win in eight matches, created the better of the few chances there were at the Mestalla but could not find a way past visiting keeper Sergio Asenjo. Asenjo did well to deny Rodrigo and Paco Alcacer in quick succession midway through the second half before ensuring Valencia substitute Alvaro Negredo did not snatch a late winner. The result means Valencia remain in fourth spot, a point behind Atletico, who beat Cordoba on Saturday. Villarreal stay in sixth.

Getafe moved seven points clear of the relegation zone by beating fellow strugglers Deportivo La Coruna 2-1 at home.

Alexis Ruano and Sergio Escudero both scored their first goals of the season to give Pablo Franco's side a two-goal lead at half-time, but the Galicians produced a much better performance after the break and had several chances to score before substitute Toche pulled a goal back in the 78th minute.

However, Victor Fernandez's side created few further openings and they remain one point above the bottom-three, without a win in seven matches, while Getafe move on to 32 points and edge closer to safety.

April 4, 2015

BRATISLAVA—

Both sides in the conflict in Ukraine could pull back weapons under 100mm caliber from the front line in a bid to boost confidence in a cease-fire, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday.

Lavrov said there was a common aim for a cease-fire in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions agreed in Minsk in February to hold indefinitely, although there have been some violations.

Lavrov said parties involved in the conflict as well as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were discussing what could be done on the top of the Minsk agreement which, among other measures, involved the pullback of weapons with caliber over 100mm, including large artillery, heavy mortar and powerful rocket systems.

“It is necessary to monitor keeping mainly the military part of the Minsk agreements....There is a possibility to pull back troops with caliber under 100mm,” Lavrov said.

“We will try to help the sides to reach such an agreement, which would increase mutual confidence,” Lavrov told a news conference during a visit to Slovakia.

His remarks echoed comments by a Kyiv official last week that weapons not covered by the Minsk agreements, such as tanks and 80mm mortar and other weapons of up to 100mm caliber may be pulled back.

He criticized a Ukrainian law on the status of eastern Ukraine which he said went in the opposite direction than the Minsk ceasefire agreements.

Ukraine's parliament voted on in March to offer limited self-rule to pro-Russian rebels in the east. But Kyiv's insistence that the law should come into force only when elections are held in the eastern territories under Ukrainian jurisdiction drew immediate criticism from Russia.

Asked about the rights of Crimea Tatars after Russia's annexation of Crimea last year Lavrov said they had full rights to use their language and were represented in power structures.

April 4, 2015

The UN calls him a "spoiler." The US has frozen his assets. But Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's former president, remains a powerful force in the country, aiding the Houthi rebels who are trying to destroy the man who replaced him. Saleh, a strongman who ran Yemen for 33 years, stepped down in 2011 after a wave of popular protests. But if demonstrations drove him from office, they failed to drive him from power. Thanks to the flawed immunity deal he signed in exchange for resigning, Saleh still lives in Yemen, heads its biggest political party and retains a network of well-placed friends, family and cronies.

"From Saleh's perspective, he could never accept that he was taken out of power," says Dr. Alma Abdul Hadi Jadallah, who served as the coordinator and regional expert on the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen for close to a year. "He also looked around with the Arab Spring and saw that other presidents have not given up their seat in spite of local discontent. So he felt shortchanged by the 2011 agreement, even though he had negotiated immunity for himself." Saleh is thought to have enabled Houthi forces to take over the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, last September by asking military forces loyal to him to step aside. "There were a lot of testimonials around former military senior leaders who were seen either impersonating the Houthis — meaning wearing symbols to indicate that they were Houthis but they were recognized by the local population that they were former Saleh military personnel," Jadallah says. The former leader also appeared on Yemeni television on March 28, the third night of Saudi-led airstrikes against Houthi forces, demanding that the air campaign end. "And so, yes, there has been an alliance between him and the Houthis — a very strange one, like I said," Jadallah says. "But, again, it was probably based on the politics that are happening on the ground, and the discontent with President Hadi."

The ongoing air campaign was joined by ground combat in the southern Yemeni city Aden on Thursday, where Houthis captured the presidential palace.  "It’s getting really bad,” says Sanaa-based activist Hisham al-Omeisy, who’s in close contact with family and friends in Aden. “It’s creating hell, basically, for the residents. They have very thin walls down there, because of the humidity — it’s very hot there — so the bullets are just coming through the walls, through the homes and residences. It’s creating panic.”   Yet even with the violence wrought by fighting and the airstrikes, many Yemenis might still prefer that to Saleh's rule. "In his mind maybe he thinks he has contributed to Yemen," she says, but the statistics paint a far different picture. While Saleh built up a personal fortune of at least $30 billion during his rule, according to a UN Security Council report, Yemen's economy cratered. "50 percent [of Yemenis] live below the poverty line; 14.7 [million Yemenis] need humanitarian assistance, and probably with the latest events there would be more that would need that; 10 million people are food insecure; 13 million lack access to sanitation and water," Jadallah says. "And the list goes on." So how did Saleh salt away those billions? "He used a lot of patronage," Jaddallah says. "He benefited from a lot of illicit trade. He made sure he was part of a lot of business deals that were brokered through Yemen as a country." And for the time being, she says, things are only likely to get worse: "These numbers will increase given all the challenges that they are facing now on the ground with the public being actually captured between [Saleh,] his loyalists and the Houthi movement, and of course the Saudi bombardment of Yemen to restore the legitimacy of President Hadi."

April 4, 2015

Sen. Al Franken is urging the FBI to more quickly and aggressively pursue and respond to reports of revenge porn, marking a rare burst of attention on a controversial topic Congress has typically been quiet about.

In a letter to FBI Director James Comey, the Minnesota Democrat asked for more information about the agency's authority to police against revenge porn, or the act of posting explicit sexual content online without the subject's consent, often for purposes of humiliation and extortion. The popularity of the practice has ballooned in recent years, and victim's are disproportionately women.

"The digital age has brought many benefits for free speech, commercial activity, and the sharing of information, but new technologies can pose significant threats if bad actors are not held accountable to our nation's laws," Franken wrote in his letter. "As technologies rapidly advance, it is our responsibility to ensure that our nation's laws keep pace with those technologies. But it is also our responsibility to ensure that existing laws are strictly enforced."

Franken—the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee's privacy, technology and the law panel—asked Comey to explain all the legal authorities at the FBI's disposal that can used to investigate and pursue revenge-porn cases. The privacy hawk is also requesting statistics on how those authorities, ranging from hacking and identity theft laws, have been used "to combat conduct of this nature."

In addition, Franken asked for information on any limitations within current law that may have impeded the FBI from carrying out investigations or making arrests. Franken asked for a response by May 8. His office did not immediately say whether it was working on revenge-porn legislation.

Lawmakers in Congress have been reticent to weigh in directly on revenge porn, despite the growth of the industry in recent years. Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, has for the past year been working on a bill that would criminalize revenge porn, but no bill has yet been introduced.

Open-Internet advocates generally oppose legislation that would expand criminal penalties to allow authorities to go after operators of revenge-porn websites. At the heart of the debate is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally protects websites like YouTube from being legally liable for the third-party content. Exceptions are made for copyrighted material and other content that violates certain federal criminal law, such as child porn, but websites are still able to avoid liability if they adopt reasonable takedown policies.

Absent federal action, several states have passed revenge porn laws of their own that make the practice a crime.

Franken applauded technology companies for becoming increasingly diligent in policing against revenge porn, citing recent steps taken by Twitter and reddit to make such content easier to flag and remove.

"I am hopeful that these recent developments and the increased public attention to the problem will lead to a more concentrated federal effort to combat this growing threat to Americans' privacy and safety."

National Journal report.

April 4, 2015

(Bloomberg) -- Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the first declared candidate for a 2016 presidential nomination, and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are among 57 U.S. lawmakers asking the Supreme Court to reject the notion of a constitutional right to gay marriage and leave the issue up to the states.

Their filing on Friday is among a flurry of submissions to the nine justices, who are set to hear argument over the issue on April 28. Same-sex marriage is currently allowed in 37 states and the District of Columbia.

The high court decided in January to consider whether the same-sex couples have a right to wed under the U.S. Constitution, taking up a bundle of cases emanating from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.

A Cincinnati-based federal appeals court in November said the matter was best left to “customary political processes,” reversing a suite of lower-court rulings in favor of gay-marriage rights proponents. Four other regional appellate courts concluded state gay-marriage prohibitions violate U.S. constitutional protections.

McConnell, Cruz, U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma and congressmen Louie Gohmert of Texas, Steve King of Iowa and the other legislators echoed the Cincinnati panel and urged the high court to exercise restraint.

“This court should respect the role of the states as laboratories of democracy and defer to the Democratic processes of the states,” they said in their filing.

The high court this week received more than a dozen memos from non-parties with an interest in the outcome of the case, including one from 15 allied states. Two, Utah and Oklahoma, had previously asked the Supreme Court to review lower court decisions invalidating their same-sex marriage prohibitions. The high court declined to do so.

Filings in support of gays’ right to marry have come from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Google Inc., Walt Disney Co. and the Obama administration. The high court is expected to rule by the end of June.

Cruz, a first-term senator, announced his candidacy on March 23.

The case is Obergefell v. Hodges, 14-556, U.S. Supreme Court (Washington).

--With assistance from Greg Stohr in Washington.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Harris in federal court in Chicago at aharris16@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net Peter Blumberg

April 4, 2015

FALL RIVER, Mass. (AP) -- The judge overseeing the murder trial of former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez heard vigorous arguments Friday from prosecutors and the defense on how she should instruct the jury to interpret evidence, including parts of witness testimony.

In particular, defense attorney James Sultan asked Superior Court Judge Susan Garsh to remind the jury that some testimony from Kyle Aspinwall, an employee of firearms manufacturer Glock, had been struck from the record. Sultan said it was the "most important testimony" in the monthslong trial.

Aspinwall told the jury March 11 that he believed that a black object seen in Hernandez's hand on home surveillance footage was a Glock pistol. That testimony was the most conclusive in the trial that puts a weapon in Hernandez's hand in the hours after the June 17, 2013, slaying of Odin Lloyd, who was dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancee.

Aspinwall said he could identify the object based on his knowledge of the pistol's back strap, magazine well and trigger guard. But Garsh told jurors the following day -- after questioning Aspinwall without the jury present -- not to consider testimony about characteristics other than the back strap. She also reminded jurors that Aspinwall's testimony was his opinion.

Garsh agreed to reiterate those two points when she gives jury instructions.

Garsh also ruled Friday that she will instruct jurors that any statements Hernandez made outside the court denying his involvement in the killing should not be considered evidence of his guilt.

Hernandez's fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins, testified Monday that Hernandez had told her in the days following the shooting that he was not involved. On Tuesday, New England Patriots team owner Robert Kraft testified that Hernandez -- his former star tight end -- had told him he was innocent and had an alibi for the night of the killing.

Prosecutors rested their case Thursday after calling 131 witnesses and submitting hundreds of pieces of evidence. The defense is expected to present witnesses and rest Monday.

The jury was not in court Friday. The judge sent them home Thursday with a reminder to be extra vigilant and to not discuss the case over the holiday weekend. 

April 4, 2015

A U.S. federal judge ordered Washington state on Thursday to end long jail terms for criminal defendants awaiting mental competency exams, after ruling last year that such actions had violated the U.S. Constitution.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ordered an injunction requiring that such inmates receive competency services within seven days, adding in her 25-page order that a monitor would be appointed to oversee the ruling.

"Washington is violating the constitutional rights of some of its most vulnerable citizens," Pechman wrote. "Our jails are not suitable places for the mentally ill to be warehoused while they wait for services. Jails are not hospitals."

Washington state law requires mental competency evaluations to be performed within seven days on defendants who have been charged with a crime and might be mentally incompetent to stand trial.

But in recent years, defendants were left languishing for up to six months, some in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, partly because of staff and funding shortages at the state's Department of Social and Health Services.

"We're evaluating the ruling in consultation with our clients, and that's all we can really say on the matter right now," Washington State Attorney General spokesman Peter Lavallee said.

The state's health department could not be immediately reached for comment.

Pechman found in December that the state had violated the due process rights of some pretrial criminal defendants suspected of mental illness by keeping them jailed for weeks or even months awaiting a competency evaluation.

Pechman wrote in Thursday's order that the state routinely flouted the court's orders, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of contempt fees.

She added that about half of those ordered to undergo mental competency evaluations are ultimately found incompetent.

Thursday's order came in the remedy phase of the lawsuit, brought by attorneys of mentally ill inmates and the Washington state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson; Writing by Curtis Skinner; Editing by Miral Fahmy)

April 4, 2015

LOS ANGELES—A judge will soon decide whether the wife of former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling will recoup millions of dollars in gifts and cash he allegedly gave to his companion V. Stiviano.

Shelly Sterling contends that her husband spent more than $3 million on Stiviano, whom she accuses of being Donald Sterling's mistress. Shelly Sterling's attorneys say her husband used shared assets to pay for the gifts and that she never gave her consent.

Stiviano, 32, and Donald Sterling, 80, deny having a sexual relationship, saying they are just friends. Stiviano was at the center of last year's controversy that led to Donald Sterling being stripped of his ownership of the NBA team after she recorded him making racially charged remarks. Her attorney has asserted that the gifts were made during a time when the Sterlings were separated and that Shelly Sterling and her attorneys have not proved that Donald Sterling was the source of some of the gifts. A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge will decide whether Stiviano will have to return the gifts. In all, Shelly claims her husband gave Stiviano about $3.6 million in gifts since 2010. She has asked a judge to order Stiviano to repay $2.8 million.

Here is a sample of the gifts in dispute:

$1.8 million — Spanish-style duplex

$1.2 million — cash (total)

$400,000 — cars (Ferrari, two Bentleys and Range Rover)

$200,000 — credit cards (total)

$10,420 — two Chanel flapbags

$5,333 — Cartier love bracelet

$4,570 — Louis Vuitton suitcase

$1,051 — Manolo Blahnik shoes

$925 — dry cleaning

$843 — skin treatment

$695 — Chanel thong sandals

$391 — Easter bunny costume

$354 — birthday cake

$299 — two-speed blender

$140 — Kobe 8 System Nike basketball shoes

$12 — lace thong

$1 — donation to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital as part of a purchase at a CVS store.

Source: Los Angeles County Superior Court documents

April 4, 2015

President Barack Obama on Friday unveiled an expansion of U.S. government efforts to train military veterans for jobs in the solar power industry during a visit to Utah.

The administration announced a new goal of training 75,000 people to enter the solar work force by 2020. That is an increase from a goal announced last year of training 50,000 workers by the same deadline.

Many of those workers would be veterans, administration officials said.

The Department of Defense plans to have "Solar Ready Vets" programs at 10 bases across the country to train military members who are returning to civilian life for solar jobs.

"It's going to train transitioning military personnel for careers in this growing industry," Obama said of the program during remarks at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, standing near a set of solar panel installations.

Officials declined to provide a figure for what the programs would cost.

April 4, 2015

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Seven San Francisco police officers accused of sending racist and homophobic text messages have been suspended, and the police chief has recommended that they be fired.

Chief Greg Suhr announced Friday that he has asked a police oversight committee to approve firing the officers. Six others face disciplinary actions that include reassignment to positions that don't have contact with the public. Another officer tied to the investigation already has resigned.

The text messages "are of such despicable thinking that those responsible clearly fall below the minimum standards required to be a police officer," Suhr said in a statement.

But the officers, who were not identified, violated department policy to varying degrees, Suhr said.

Two officers who sent inflammatory texts were reassigned and will have their cases considered by the police commission, which can hand down penalties up to termination.

The remaining four officers did not send text messages that included "hate speech," said Suhr, who will decide how to punish them. He can suspend an officer without pay for up to 10 days.

Authorities say the texts targeting blacks, Mexicans, Filipinos and gay men were sent between 2011 and 2012. They were discovered by federal authorities investigating a former police sergeant, who was convicted of corruption and sentenced to more than three years in prison.

Meanwhile, District Attorney George Gascon said his office will review all cases going back 10 years that were linked to the officers either by writing a report, submitting evidence or testifying in court.

City leaders have raised concern that any prejudice by the officers could have led to unfair treatment, particularly in cases involving black defendants.

The San Francisco Police Officers Association earlier issued a statement saying the actions were not emblematic of individuals it represents.

April 4, 2015

Jameel Syed is embarking on a quest he believes no other follower of Islam has completed. The Auburn Hills marketing executive plans to visit a mosque in all 50 states, where he'll recite the religious call to prayer, deliver the Prophet Muhammad's last sermon as well as help chronicle the stories of local Muslim communities.

It's a daring mission leading the 40-year-old father and two associates across many thousands of miles by car and plane, through shifting terrain and diverse cities.

Amid heightened tensions and perceived anti-Muslim sentiment nationwide in the wake of extremist acts, the goal is to "have an opportunity to humanize Muslims living in America and all over the world," Syed said. "A lot of our organizations are spending a lot of time trying to defend ourselves. … Instead of telling people who I'm not, I'd rather tell people who I am." Syed was to launch the project — dubbed Muaddhin, an Arabic term referring to the person making the call to prayer — Friday at the Islamic Society of North America's headquarters in Plainfield, Ind. Before returning in early May to his home mosque, the Islamic Association of Greater Detroit in Rochester Hills, he expects to have trekked to 33 states and flown to 17, according to a GoFundMe page, gofundme.com/muaddhin, that aims to raise some $50,000 for the journey.

Syed intends to film a short video at each masjid, or mosque, allowing attendees to outline the history in that state and area as well as communicate a message to the world. Activists say his voyage could help improve attitudes toward Muslims and promote understanding. "Any publicity that lends itself to people learning about Islam is a good thing," said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Michigan chapter. Syed, a University of Michigan graduate and founder/CEO of the Fluidvisions marketing firm in Rochester Hills, said he has been planning the trek for months. The effort took on greater urgency after three Muslims were slain this year in Chapel Hill, N.C., and a string of videotaped killings committed in the Middle East by ISIS, Syed said. "This is a feel-good trip for Muslims, for friends of Muslims, who understand there's more to the population than some atrocious acts committed by people who have no understanding of … Islam," he said. Syed discussed the trip and plans during a gathering Thursday night at the Tawheed Center in Farmington Hills. He said he's driven by a hope to unite others across divides. "Everybody has a way they can contribute toward the common good," Syed said. "You build the bridge of relationships, you find where the commonalities are — that's the way to go." In a YouTube video, Zienab Fahs, president of Oakland University's Muslim Student Association, called for others to back Syed's work. "He's going out and getting literally everybody's perspective across America," she said in the clip. The project also helps others learn more about how deep Muslim roots extend in the country as well as works to dispel stereotypes, said Muzammil Ahmed, chair of Michigan Muslim Community Council. "The call to prayer, people don't realize, is a call for people to come to the mosque, where people find serenity… We feel the call to prayer is a very positive message, and we hope that it will drown out some of the negative messages from the extremists that are out there committing acts of violence."

April 4, 2015

(Reuters) - A Chinese naval frigate has evacuated 225 foreign citizens from strife-tornYemen, its foreign ministry said, marking the first time that China's military has helped other countries evacuate their people during an international crisis. Ten different nationalities were among the evacuees picked up on Thursday afternoon from Aden, Yemen's second city, and transported to Djibouti, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on its website late Thursday.

The ministry said foreign governments - Pakistan, Ethiopia, Singapore, Italy, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Britain, Canada and Yemen - had requested China's help. A spokeswoman said it was the first time China had carried out a specific evacuation of foreign nationals from a danger zone. A diplomatic source familiar with the operation said it was "very risky" and that fighting had come close to the Chinese warship.

"The Chinese ship was in the right place at the right time," the source said.

A spokeswoman for Germany's foreign ministry confirmed that China had evacuated three Germans to Djibouti, adding that Berlin was "very thankful to the Chinese government for its support".

Violence has been spreading across Yemen since last year, when Iran-backed Shi'ite Houthi fighters seized the capital, Sanaa, and effectively removed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. A Saudi-led coalition has hit the rebels with air strikes over the past week. A state television report on Friday showed evacuees, who were mostly Pakistani, arriving in Djibouti.

"We are really thankful to the Chinese government, who really helped us, and took us out (with) the school children," one woman told China Central Television.

The broadcaster showed footage young children stepping off a Chinese warship waving Chinese flags, and in one case, kissing a seaman on the cheek. The evacuation of foreigners bolsters China's image at home and abroad, according to Shen Dingli, an international relations professor at Fudan University in Shanghai.

"We wouldn't look very good if we have the capacity to help others but no heart to do it," Shen said.

"Now we look really good," he added.

China had earlier evacuated 571 of its own nationals, along with eight foreigners who worked for Chinese companies.

Once-reclusive China has become increasingly active in disaster relief and humanitarian aid abroad as its global economic interests widen.

"China has been keen to learn from the experience of other countries on how to evacuate people, especially after Libya," said one senior Western diplomat in Beijing. "It's good to see China taking more of an interest in this."

A low-key diplomatic player in the Middle East despite its reliance on oil from the region,China has voiced concern at the surge in violence in Yemen and called for a political solution. Beijing drew international praise last year when it sent elite troops to help Ebola-hit Liberia by building a treatment center and help transport medical supplies.

China also sent a state-of-the-art hospital ship to the Philippines in 2013 after one of the world's biggest typhoons killed thousands.

April 4, 2015

(Reuters) - Fighters loyal to Yemen's president pushed Houthi fighters back from central Aden on Friday after they were reinforced with weapons parachuted into their beleaguered section of the southern port city by Saudi-led warplanes. The military setback for the Shi'ite Houthis came after days of advances in Aden, the last major foothold of fighters loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, despite a week-old Saudi campaign of air strikes to halt the Houthis and bolster Hadi. Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia, alarmed by the Iranian-allied Houthis' march on Hadi's powerbase in Aden, launched its air campaign nine days ago along with regional backers. The intervention marks Riyadh's most assertive move yet to counter what it sees as a spread of Shi'ite Iran's power in the region, a proxy struggle also playing out in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Aden residents said the Houthi fighters and their allies withdrew from the central Crater district as well as one of Hadi's presidential residences which they took 24 hours earlier. A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, said the logistical support airdropped at dawn on Friday had helped turn the tide for Hadi's fighters. "They received the support and they were able to change the situation on the ground, driving the Houthi militias out of the palace and the areas that they had briefly taken control of," he told a news briefing in Riyadh. The crates of light weapons, telecommunications equipment and rocket-propelled grenades were parachuted into Aden's Tawahi district, on the far end of the Aden peninsula which is still held by Hadi loyalists, fighters told Reuters. The Houthis, fighting alongside soldiers loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, emerged as the strongest force in Yemen after they took over the capital Sanaa in September. After they turned on Aden last week, Hadi fled abroad and has watched from Riyadh while his remaining authority has eroded. Turmoil in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country comes after year of separatism, tribal conflict, sectarian violence and an insurgency by al Qaeda militants targeted by U.S. drones.

GROUND TROOPS OPTION

Local militia forces said they killed 10 Houthis during the fighting which pushed the Shi'ite movement out of Crater.

Two brothers working for the Red Crescent were shot dead while evacuating wounded to an ambulance, the aid group said. Militia forces blamed the Houthis and said the fighters also killed two patients when they shot at the ambulance taking casualties from Aden's peninsula to a hospital on the mainland. The coalition, trying to reassert Hadi's standing before any political settlement, has said that sending ground troops into Yemen remains an option.

Officials have declined to say whether special forces have already deployed. Saudi ambassador to Washington Adel al-Jubeir said on Thursday the kingdom does not have "formal" troops on the ground in Aden.

Tribal sources in Yemen said on Friday that Saudi Arabia had started to remove parts of a fence along its border with the northwestern Yemeni provinces of Saada and Hajja. This could be a prelude to an incursion by ground troops, but may also be part of more modest efforts to secure the frontier area, which on some stretches includes a buffer zone between the two countries. Saudi Arabia's Ekbariya television said two border guards were killed in an attack after dusk on Friday near Dhahran. It gave no details. U.S. government sources said on Thursday that, although Washington believes Saudi Arabia and its allies have deployed a military force along the border which is large enough to launch a full-scale invasion, there was no indication that Riyadh was planning such a move soon.

April 3, 2015

(Reuters) - China's Foreign Ministry expressed anger on Thursday after two U.S. fighter jets landed in Taiwan, in a rare official contact between the militaries of the United States and the self-ruled democratic island.

Taiwan's Central News Agency said the two F-18s landed at an air force base in southern Taiwan on Wednesday after experiencing mechanical problems. It said it was not clear where they were coming from or where they were going.

"While this landing was unplanned and occurred exclusively out of mechanical necessity, it reflects well on Taiwan that they permitted pilots in distress to land safely," said U.S. Pentagon spokeswoman Henrietta Levin.

China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, told a regular news briefing: "We have already made solemn representations to the U.S. side."

"China demands that the United States strictly abide by the 'one-China policy' ... and cautiously and appropriately handle this incident."

The United States is obligated to help Taiwan defend itself under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, when Washington severed formal ties with the island to recognize the People's Republic of China in Beijing.

U.S. weapons sales in recent years to Taiwan, or indeed any formal contact between the two armed forces, have provoked strong condemnation by China, but have not caused lasting damage to Beijing's relations with either Washington or Taipei.

China views Taiwan as a renegade province and has not ruled out the use of force to bring it under its control.

While Taiwan and China have signed a series of landmark trade and economic agreements since 2008, political and military suspicions still run deep, especially in democratic Taiwan, where many fear China's true intentions.

China's military modernization has also been accompanied by a more assertive posture in its regional territorial disputes.

April 3, 2015

Lansing — The state says Michigan’s seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate has fallen 0.8 points to 5.8 percent in the latest month as the job picture continues to brighten.

The Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget released statewide and regional employment figures Thursday for February.

The statewide rate is down 1.8 percent from February 2014. The drop follows a 1 percentage point increase in January, mainly because of normal annual changes in the state’s job market.

The department says unemployment rates fell in all 17 major regional labor markets. The jobless rates ranged from 3.4 percent in the Ann Arbor area to 10.3 percent in the northeastern Lower Peninsula.

It says the jobless rate in populous metropolitan Detroit fell 1.1 points in February to 6.3 percent.

April 2, 2015

(Reuters) - Iran and world powers reached a framework on curbing Iran's nuclear program at marathon talks in Switzerland on Thursday that will allow further negotiations towards a final agreement. A Western official said it would include limits on Iran's enrichment of uranium for 10 years. Western and Iranian officials at the talks said they would conclude with a joint statement announcing that enough progress had been reached to allow further negotiations until a final deadline of June 30.

"Agreement on framework for final agreement reached. Press conference following," Germany's foreign ministry said on Twitter.

Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted: "Found solutions, ready to start drafting immediately".

President Hasan Rouhani made a similar announcement on Twitter and phoned Zarif and chief negotiator Ali Akbar Salehi to thank them for their work.

It was not clear how much of the framework's details would be officially announced. Its details are highly sensitive to both sides, especially Iran, which is worried about signing off on explicit targets to curb its nuclear program in the absence of a final settlement that would see economic sanctions lifted.

A Western official said the sides had agreed that the comprehensive settlement would require Iran to dilute or ship abroad most of its stocks of enriched uranium, and suspend two thirds of the 19,000 centrifuges it operates for enrichment. It will be monitored for 10 years.

Those targets would all depend on achieving the final settlement over the next three months, the official said. Western countries say enriched uranium can be used to make a weapon, which they aim to prevent. Iran says it wants it only for a peaceful nuclear program. The joint statement would be issued by Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who has acted as a coordinator for the six powers - Britain, China, France,Germany, Russia and the United States.

Representatives of all the sides sat for a full session of talks at around 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) on Thursday, and officials said they expected the statement around an hour later, although it could be delayed.

Zarif and Mogherini would release their statement and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry would then hold a news conference to explain the outcome.

The deal wraps up eight days of marathon talks, extended after a deadline of midnight on Tuesday, aiming to achieve a political agreement that could serve as the basis for a final deal by June 30.

Iran wants to preserve what it says is its right to peaceful nuclear technology, while lifting international sanctions that have hamstrung its economy.

The talks are the biggest opportunity for rapprochement between Washington and Tehran since they became enemies after Iran's 1979 revolution, but any deal faces scepticism from conservatives in both countries. U.S. allies in the Middle East are also skeptical, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Twitter any deal must roll back Iran's nuclear capability.

April 2, 2015

Russia never threatened to use nuclear weapons over Crimea and the Baltic States, according to Vladimir Putin’s press secretary. The Kremlin official added the claims were simply 'hysteria' and a 'classic example' of the West’s demonization of Russia.

 This is a classic example of the continuing hysteria and the demonization of our country. They themselves are fanning the flames concerning this. However, it is not guided by any particular facts and they themselves are afraid of what they wrote,” Peskov told reporters. The Times newspaper said that President Putin was using the threat of a “nuclear showdown” over the Baltic States, to force NATO to back away from Russia’s border. They made the claims after obtaining notes of high-level security talks between former Russian and American security chiefs. US officials stated that President Putin was ready to respond forcibly to any further NATO build-up of troops in the Baltic States and they would deliver “a spectrum of responses from nuclear to non-military,” the Times added. The American military figures also stated that the Russian generals allegedly raised three flashpoints that “could lead to a direct and possibly even nuclear confrontation between the two nations.”

According to the Times, the potential flashpoints include any attempt by the West to return Crimea to Ukraine, NATO supplying Kiev with lethal weapons and the Baltic States, where according to the US officials, Russian security figures said they saw, “the same conditions that existed in Ukraine and caused Russia to take action there.”

Peskov added it is “impossible to seriously acknowledge such publications.” Putin’s press secretary said Russia had never threatened to use nuclear weapons in connection with events in Crimea. Those who wrote the articles hadn’t bothered to read the original source, which were Vladimir Putin’s words concerning the recently released documentary, aired on Russian television, ‘Crimea - The Way Home.’

“The president talked about this if you remember in the documentary film, which they interpret in different ways. However, they did not even bother to watch it through or even read the transcript,”Peskov concluded.

During the documentary, Putin said K-300P Bastion costal defense missiles were deployed in Crimea to demonstrate Russia’s willingness to protect the peninsula from military attack. “We deployed them in a way that made them clearly visibly from space,” Putin said in the documentary broadcast on March 15. The president gave an assurance that the Russian military were prepared for any developments and would have armed nuclear weapons if necessary. Putin said he wasn’t sure whether Western nations would refrain from military force against Russia. “We were ready to do this. I had spoken with colleagues and told them that Crimea is historically our territory and Russian people live there. They were in danger and we could not leave them. We did not create a coup d'état. This was done by nationalists and people with extremist beliefs. You supported them. But where are you? Thousands of kilometers away! But we are here and this is our land!” Putin said in the documentary. Russia has long been critical of NATO carrying out military drills in the Baltic States near its borders.

Thousands of US troops and hundreds of tanks have poured into Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the past two months as part of an operation dubbed “Atlantic Resolve.” In February, 140 NATO vehicles and 1,400 troops swept through Narva, a mere 300 meters from the Russian border.

April 2, 2015

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks edged higher on Thursday after two days of declines following encouraging data on the labor market, which raised investors' hopes for Friday's key payrolls report. The S&P consumer discretionary index .SPLRCD, up 0.7 percent, was among the day's better-performing indexes, helped by gains in CarMax (KMX.N) shares. The stock jumped 9.4 percent to $74.80 following stronger-than-expected results.

Oil prices fell as much as 4 percent after global powers negotiating a nuclear deal with Irancalled for a news conference after over a week of talks in Switzerland. Tehran hopes for a deal that will end crippling economic sanctions and allow it to sell millions of barrels of oil. This supply would add to a global glut that has already sharply pressured oil prices.

Energy shares slipped between positive and negative territory as Brent crude oil hit session lows. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week. The report follows lower-than-expected readings on private sector employment and manufacturing on Wednesday.

But the big news on the labor front will come with the influential March jobs report, due on Friday, when the stock market is closed for Good Friday. Market participants will be unable to trade off the report until Monday.

"If the report is weaker than expected, people might become more optimistic about interest rates," said John Carey, portfolio manager at Pioneer Investment Management in Boston, though he said playing it ahead of time could be tricky. "Bad news could be good news."

At 1:45 p.m. EDT, the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI rose 46.51 points, or 0.26 percent, to 17,744.69, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 5.94 points, or 0.29 percent, to 2,065.63 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 6.59 points, or 0.14 percent, to 4,886.82.

The Federal Reserve has said it won't raise interest rates until it deems the economystrong enough to withstand such a move, which will raise borrowing costs and possibly crimp spending. A below-consensus jobs number on Friday could ease concerns of a nearer-term rate rise, Carey said.

The release of the jobs report has only coincided with Good Friday four times since 1999, according to data from Bespoke, most recently in 2012. Analysts expect 245,000 jobs to have been added in the month, down from 295,000 in February.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,903 to 1,046, for a 1.82-to-1 ratio on the upside; on the Nasdaq, 1,624 issues rose and 1,043 fell for a 1.56-to-1 ratio favoring advancers. The benchmark S&P 500 index was posting 18 new 52-week highs and 2 new lows; theNasdaq Composite was recording 86 new highs and 28 new lows.

April 1, 2015

A family-owned pizza parlor is causing a media stir after reportedly becoming the first business to publicly vow to reject gay weddings in the wake of Indiana's controversialReligious Freedom Restoration Act.

The owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton said theirs is a "Christian establishment" and that they agree with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who has come under fire after signing the bill, which allows business owners to cite religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party, ABC 57 reported.

“That lifestyle is something they choose. I choose to be heterosexual," Kevin O'Connor told the news station. "They choose to be homosexual. Why should I be beat over the head to go along with something they choose?”

O'Connor's daughter Crystal said she didn't think that the bill was "targeting gays," adding, "It's supposed to help people that have a religious belief."

In a separate interview with The Daily Beast, O'Connor clarified that although he doesn't "have a problem with gay people," he does not condone same-sex marriage. Although he wouldn't cater to a same-sex wedding, he wouldn't turn anyone away from the shop itself.

“I mean, we don’t believe in murder. I also don’t believe in abortion,” he added.

Indiana's law has been slammed by political figures and celebrities alike. Stephen King, George Takei and Miley Cyrus are just a few of the bold-faced names to have condemned the legislation thus far.

Meanwhile, Pence has since called for an amendment to clarify that the legislation does not allow businesses to deny service to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people.

April 1, 2015

BERLIN (AP) — The U.N.'s human rights chief said Wednesday his office has received reports that Boko Haram fighters retreating from advancing military forces in Nigeria murdered women and girls they had taken as "wives," along with other captives. The recapture of parts of northeastern Nigeria in recent weeks "has brought to light gruesome scenes of mass graves and further evident signs of slaughter by Boko Haram," Zeid Raad al-Hussein told a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. Zeid gave no further details of what he said were multiple reports of fighters killing "their so-called 'wives' — in fact, women and girls held in slavery — and other captives." Boko Haram's reported use of children as "expendable cannon fodder" and human bombs would, if confirmed, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, he said.

Zeid said there also are "persistent and credible reports" of serious rights violations by Nigerian and other security forces responding to Boko Haram. He called for "thorough and fully transparent investigations" by authorities. The Islamic extremist militants have terrorized northern Nigeria and also attacked towns in neighboring countries, prompting nations in the region including Chad and Niger to put together a force to combat them. Zeid said he is "profoundly concerned about the growing ethnic and sectarian dimensions of the conflict." Boko Haram's original leader was from the Kanuri ethnic group, and the U.N. human rights office has received reports "indicating that Kanuris are now considered suspect by some military personnel," resulting in arbitrary arrests and abuse, Zeid said. Boko Haram, meanwhile, has begun targeting Nigerians of Shuwa Arab origin "apparently in retaliation for their perceived support to the Nigerian armed forces," he said.

"There is thus a high risk of escalating ethnic and religious violence," Zeid said. "This can only be halted by principled leadership and clear instructions to military personnel, with appropriate accountability."

April 1, 2015

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — Iran nuclear negotiators resumed talks here Wednesday, just hours after abandoning a March 31 deadline to reach the outline of a deal and agreeing to press on. However, as the discussions dragged on, three of the six foreign ministers involved left the talks, and prospects for agreement remained uncertain. Claiming enough progress had been made to warrant an extension after six days of intense bartering and eager to avoid a collapse in the discussions, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his British and German counterparts huddled with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif in the Swiss town of Lausanne to continue a marathon effort to bridge still significant gaps and hammer out details of a framework accord. The foreign ministers of China, France and Russia all departed Lausanne overnight, although the significance of their absence was not clear. The remaining ministers and the Chinese, French and Russian officials left behind are looking to reach understandings that would form the basis for a comprehensive agreement to be reached by the end of June. After the talks last broke in the early hours of Wednesday, Zarif said solutions to many of the problems had been found and that documents attesting to that would soon be drafted. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said before leaving that the negotiators had reached agreement in principle on all key issues, and in the coming hours it will be put on paper. But other officials were more skeptical. Asked how high the chances of success were, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: "I cannot say." And British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Iran might still not be ready to accept what is on the table. "I'm optimistic that we will make further progress this morning but it does mean the Iranians being willing to meet us where there are still issues to deal with," Hammond told British reporters. "Fingers crossed and we'll hope to get there during the course of the day." Although the Chinese, French and Russian ministers left their deputies in charge, Kerry postponed his planned Tuesday departure to stay in Lausanne, and an Iranian negotiator said his team would stay "as long as necessary" to clear the remaining hurdles. Officials say their intention is to produce a joint statement outlining general political commitments to resolving concerns about Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, and their intention to begin a new phase of negotiations to get to that point. In addition, they are trying to fashion other documents that would lay out in more detail the steps they must take by June 30 to meet those goals. The additional documents would allow the sides to make the case that the next round of talks will not simply be a continuation of negotiations that have already been twice extended since an interim agreement between Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany was concluded in November 2013. President Barack Obama and other leaders, including Iran's, have said they are not interested in a third extension. But if the parties agree only to a broad framework that leaves key details unresolved, Obama can expect stiff opposition at home from members of Congress who want to move forward with new, stiffer Iran sanctions. Lawmakers had agreed to hold off on such a measure through March while the parties negotiated. The White House says new sanctions would scuttle further diplomatic efforts to contain Iran's nuclear work and possibly lead Israel to act on threats to use military force to accomplish that goal.

And despite the progress that diplomats said merited the extension of talks into Wednesday, officials said the differences notably included issues over uranium enrichment, the status of Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles, limits on Iran's nuclear research and development, and the timing and scope of sanctions relief. 

March 30, 2015

On March 18, as Crimea marked the anniversary of its return under Russian rule, a set of speakers outside the train station in its capital, Simferopol, reminded passersby of the day’s historical significance: “Happy holiday, dear friends! Exactly one year ago we succeeded together in driving the brown plague from our peninsula.” That evening, on the city’s central Lenin Square, local politicians praised the “return home” as an existential moment for Crimea and its people. The black and orange colors of the St. George’s ribbon, a symbol in Russia of the victory over Axis forces in World War II now used by the separatist movement in Ukraine’s east, adorned the banners that flew over the crowds and served as a backdrop to the stage from which musicians later performed. A year after Crimea’s annexation by Russia was signed into force in the grand halls of Moscow’s Kremlin, a week of celebrations has been punctuated by a palpable sense of relief. The self-defense teams which sprang up last spring to defend the peninsula from the imagined fascist threat continue to patrol Simferopol’s streets, and many continue to credit Russia’s President Vladimir Putin with saving Crimea’s Russophonic population from genocide.

After 12 months, which have brought little change on the ground, a simple disarming slogan continues to function as the justification for Russia’s internationally condemned annexation: “At least they’re not shooting here.” Crimea’s population had been primed psychologically for Moscow’s “rescue operation” last spring. Once the Euro-Maidan revolution in Kiev had succeeded in ousting Ukraine’s corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych, rumor began to spread in earnest across the peninsula that a trainload of armed Ukrainian fascists was making its way south. The so-called self-defense groupings emerged to combat the coming threat, a scene given extensive coverage in a three-hour documentary recently aired on Russian television. By the time the story was exposed as a hoax, the unmarked soldiers later branded “little green men” had arrived from Russia to commandeer the peninsula and create conditions for the referendum that sealed its fate. Today, that invented fascist threat functions as the primary narrative that consolidates Crimea’s population behind the new government. Whatever happens to Crimea under Russian rule, so the narrative goes, it cannot be worse than what’s happening in Ukraine. Broken pledges to improve crumbling infrastructure and replace potholed roads can be excused so long as war and rabid nationalism is prevented from creeping across Ukraine’s southern border. In Sevastopol, home of the Black Sea Fleet and the heart of pro-Russian sentiment in Crimea, the anniversary parade on March 18 was organized by “Sevastopol Without Fascism,” a group almost identical in name to the 10 or so other civic initiatives that made up the procession. Many of those who gathered that day to shout “thank you!” felt genuinely indebted to the passing columns of camouflage-clad men for saving them from a threat they’ve been conditioned to fear. And it is with a mandate to protect the people from the alleged outbreak of fascism in Ukraine that the heightened military presence on Crimea’s streets continues. In the public psyche, those among Crimea’s inhabitants who see through that narrative and oppose Russian rule must, by default, be collaborators in that outbreak and facilitators of its spread: the Crimean Tatars who can just as convincingly claim the peninsula as their homeland, and the ethnic Ukrainians suddenly forced to endorse a government with which their compatriots are now at war.As long as Ukraine’s struggle against economic collapse and the insurgency in its east continues, that narrative will retain traction among a majority primed to imbibe the messages Russia’s media machine projects. 

March 31, 2015

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A Danish former Nazi officer and a war criminal on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most wanted list has died, according to a death note in the German paper Allgauer Zeitung published at the weekend. The notice, drawn up by his children, said 93-year-old Soren Kam died on March 23, little more than two weeks after his wife passed away.

Kam was the fifth-most wanted war criminal by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization that fights to bring former Nazis to justice and protects Jewish rights.

The Dane had been a volunteer officer in the SS-Viking division and was judged to have been involved in the murder of Danish anti-Nazi newspaper editor Carl Henrik Clemmensen. He also fought on the Eastern front and was highly decorated.

A Danish court case conducted straight after the war convicted him in absentia of the murder, together with another man who was executed. Kam had fled to Germany where he obtained citizenship in 1956. Germany had refused to extradite him to Denmark several times, according to Danish media.

"The fact that Soren Kam, a totally unrepentant Nazi murderer, died a free man in Kempten (Germany), is a terrible failure of the Bavarian judicial authorities," the center's chief Nazi hunter, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, said in the statement.

"Kam should have finished his miserable life in jail, whether in Denmark or Germany. The failure to hold him accountable will only inspire the contemporary heirs of the Nazis to consider following in his footsteps," Zuroff said.

Zuroff later said by telephone Kam had been on the center's list for the Clemmensen murder and not for giving Nazis a registry of Danish Jews to help forces deport them to concentration camps, an accusation Danish authorities could find no evidence for.

He said the center's most-wanted list, which now contains the names of eight men, is based on a realistic hope the accused can be brought to justice and is not a list of the most notorious Nazis.

March 30, 2015

22 Russian tanks crossed into Ukraine’s separatist-held eastern territories over the weekend, as pro-Moscow forces continue to seep into Ukraine’s war-stricken Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Donetsk’s local pro-government officials reported yesterday. In a statement published on Donetsk’s regional government website, the deputy head of Ukraine’s anti-separatist military operations in Donetsk and Luhansk Valentin Fechev, condemned the “cynical lies” of pro-Russian fighters who have accused Ukraine of violating the ceasefire between the two sides, and instead gave a recent recap of Russian violations. Fechev told the regional government website that 22 tanks had crossed from Russia via the border town of Gukovo, into Ukraine’s Luhansk region, heading toward the city of Sverdlovsk for maintenance. On Sunday night 15 separatist Grad missiles were fired at the Ukrainian city of Horlivka. The Donetsk administration explains that pro-Russian fighters had received 122mm Grad missiles as part of one of Russia’s so called “humanitarian convoys”, which continue to arrive in the rebel-held regions. According to the local administration the pro-Russian rebels underwent military exercises several days prior in the town of Yenakiieve, using heavy artillery and guns with the aim of eventually stationing them in the town of Horlivka.

Fechev said that fighters as well as equipment crossed the border from Russia to Ukraine last weekend, claiming that more than 800 Russian mercenary fighters had entered Ukraine to fight over the last few days. He went on to say that these fighters are there for “the gain of personal wealth”, rather than being motivated by the idea of resurrecting a ‘New Russia’ (Novorossiya) in Ukraine. He estimates that of those 800 Russian fighters, 200 were Russian Cossacks who had entered Ukraine with small arms “to die for Russian money” last week, and 600 were “mercenaries” who appeared to be from Russia’s Siberian Buryat region.

A group of Russian Chechen fighters has also been tracked in the region by Ukrainian authorities, who claim the group looted nearby scrap storage facilities last week.

Fechev pointed out that they do not represent the “liberty-loving Chechen people” but were rather Kadyrovtsi - a word used to describe the fighters of Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, who is a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Fechev also added that these new arrivals from Russia were necessary as locals to Donetsk and Luhansk had largely not opted to join the separatist cause, estimating that rebel mobilisation efforts were only 10-15% successful.

A survey published by Ukrainian agency Interfax today which surveyed over 2,000 citizens of Donetsk and Luhansk found that 45% of residents admitted they did not have enough to eat, while 63% said life was “difficult but [they] would make do”.

Russia is frequently forced to deny that it is sending military equipment or personnel to Ukraine, despite evidence that they are. Rebel leader Alexander Zaharchenko estimated in August that there are as many as 4,000 Russian soldiers fighting under him in Donetsk, however added that they were there on a voluntary basis, out of personal solidarity for the pro-Russian cause.

“We also have Russian soldiers here who would rather spend their holidays not on the beach but fighting for the freedom of their brothers,” he added.

March 31, 2015

Broadcaster Stephen Fry has sworn off Instagram, saying he has been "hounded off" the photo-sharing service.

The 57-year-old, who commands a huge following on social media, announced his departure by posting a blank, black image on Monday.

"Newspapers, as ever, suck all the joy out of everything," he wrote. "Closing down. It was, briefly, fun. Bye."

The actor, author and QI host has had an Instagram account since June 2013 and also uses Twitter.

His time with Twitter, though, has seen several temporary silences, hiatuses and threats to stop using it.

In 2009 he said he was considering giving up on the micro-blogging website because it contained "too much aggression and unkindness".

Fry is currently "taking a holiday" from Twitter, telling his "dearest followers" last month he would be "away until May".

March 31, 2015

The passport numbers and visa details of 31 world leaders were accidentally emailed to the organisers of the Asian Cup in Australia before the G20 summit in Brisbane in November 2014. Those affected included US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A worker at the Australian Department of Immigration sent the list by mistake. The department decided there was no need to alert the G20 attendees.

"Given that the risks of the breach are considered very low and the actions that have been taken to limit the further distribution of the email, I do not consider it necessary to notify the clients of the breach," an unnamed Department of Immigration director wrote to the Australian Privacy Commissioner in an email obtained by the Guardian following a Freedom of Information request. Both the sender of the email and the recipient had deleted it within 10 minutes of it being sent, the officer explained, and the Asian Cup football tournament organisers said they did not believe the email was accessible or stored on their servers.

The message included the 31 world leaders' dates of birth but not personal addresses and other contact details. The breach was said to be the result of "human error", with the sender forgetting to check the auto-fill function in Microsoft Outlook's email service before hitting send.

"There was nothing systemic or institutional about the breach," continued the email from the government official.

"It should also be noted that the personal details of these individuals, including their names, positions and dates of birth are generally already available in the public domain given their prominent positions."

March 30, 2015

Thousands online have shared an image of a Syrian child with her hands raised in surrender - but what is the story behind it?

Those sharing it were moved by the fear in the child's eyes, as she seems to staring into the barrel of a gun. It wasn't a gun, of course, but a camera, and the moment was captured for all to see. But who took the picture and what is the story behind it? BBC Trending have tracked down the original photographer - Osman Sağırlı - and asked him how the image came to be. It began to go viral Tuesday last week, when it was tweeted by Nadia Abu Shaban, a photojournalist based in Gaza. The image quickly spread across the social network. "I'm actually weeping", "unbelievably sad", and "humanity failed", the comments read. The original post has been retweeted more than 11,000 times. On Friday the image was shared on Reddit, prompting another outpouring of emotion. It's received more than 5,000 upvotes, and 1,600 comments.

Accusations that the photo was fake, or staged, soon followed on both networks. Many on Twitter asked who had taken the photo, and why it had been posted without credit. Abu Shaban confirmed she had not taken the photo herself, but could not explain who had. On Imgur, an image sharing website, one user traced the photograph back to a newspaper clipping, claiming it was real, but taken "around 2012", and that the child was actually a boy. The post also named a Turkish photojournalist, Osman Sağırlı, as the man who took the picture. BBC Trending spoke to Sağırlı - now working in Tanzania - to confirm the origins of the picture. The child is in fact not a boy, but a four-year-old girl, Hudea. The image was taken at the Atmeh refugee camp in Syria, in December last year. She travelled to the camp - around 10 km from the Turkish border - with her mother and two siblings. It is some 150 km from their home in Hama.

"I was using a telephoto lens, and she thought it was a weapon," says Sağırlı. "İ realised she was terrified after I took it, and looked at the picture, because she bit her lips and raised her hands. Normally kids run away, hide their faces or smile when they see a camera." He says he finds pictures of children in the camps particularly revealing. "You know there are displaced people in the camps. It makes more sense to see what they have suffered not through adults, but through children. It is the children who reflect the feelings with their innocence."

The image was first published in the Türkiye newspaper in January, where Sağırlı has worked for 25 years, covering war and natural disasters outside the country. It was widely shared by Turkish speaking social media users at the time. But it took a few months before it went viral in the English-speaking world, finding an audience in the West over the last week.

March 31, 2015

Japan has unveiled its largest warship since World War II, to be used in anti-submarine warfare and border-area surveillance missions. The vessel has a flight deck nearly 250m (820ft) long and can reportedly carry more than nine helicopters.

Its unveiling comes amid tensions with China over islands which both countries insist are theirs. The Philippines is also bolstering its marine defences by buying a second decommissioned US Coast Guard ship.

President Benigno Aquino on Tuesday welcomed the arrival of the vessel in Subic Bay.

He said it would be used to intensify patrols of the Philippines' exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, where disputed waters have also raised tensions.

Island tension

Correspondents say that the launch of the huge Japanese flat-top destroyer, Izumo, has raised eyebrows in China because it bears a strong resemblance to a conventional aircraft carrier. Japan has one of the best-equipped and best-trained naval forces in the Pacific. Officials say it will be used for national defence and will enhance Japan's ability to transport personnel and supplies in response to large-scale natural disasters, such as the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Although work on Izumo has been ongoing since 2009, its unveiling comes as Japan and China are locked in a dispute over several small islands located between southern Japan and Taiwan.

Vessels from both countries have been conducting patrols around the islands, called the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyutai in China.

Tension over the issue, along with China's heavy spending on defence and military modernisation, have heightened calls in Japan for its naval and air forces to be strengthened. China recently began operating a refurbished Russian aircraft carrier - and is also reportedly moving forward with the construction of another that is domestically built.

Technically the Izumo is a destroyer, but some experts believe the new Japanese ship could potentially be used to launch fighter jets or other aircraft that have the ability to take off vertically. That would be a departure for Japan, correspondents say, even though it has one of the best-equipped and best-trained naval forces in the Pacific.

Since the end of WWII it has not sought to build aircraft carriers of its own because of constitutional restrictions that limit its military forces to a defensive role.

March 30, 2015

The co-pilot of the crashed Germanwings plane, Andreas Lubitz, had received treatment for suicidal tendencies before getting his pilot licence, investigators say, but not recently.

Lubitz, 27, is suspected of deliberately crashing the plane in the Alps, killing all 150 people on board.

Officials in Duesseldorf said the investigation to this point had revealed no clue to any motive.

So far, DNA strands of 80 of the victims have been found.

Duesseldorf public prosecutor Christoph Kumpa said that "several years" before Lubitz became a pilot he "had at that time been in treatment of a psychotherapist because of what is documented as being suicidal".

But he added: "In the following period, and until recently, further doctor's visits took place, resulting in sick notes without any suicidal tendencies or aggression against others being recorded."

No specific dates were given. Lubitz enrolled in training with Lufthansa in 2008 and became a pilot in 2013. He was diagnosed with a serious depressive episode in 2009 and received treatment for a year and a half, media reports say.

Insights:

Mr Kumpa added: "There still is no evidence that the co-pilot said beforehand that he would do what we have to assume was done and we haven't found a letter or anything like that that contains a confession."

Mr Kumpa said: "We have not found anything in his surrounding [environment] - be it personal or his family or his professional surrounding - that is giving us any hints that enable us to say anything about his motivation."

There had been some media reports that Lubitz had problems with his vision, possibly a detached retina.

But Mr Kumpa said there was no documentation on any eyesight problems that were caused by an "organic illness".

There has also been widespread speculation about Lubitz's romantic life.

One unconfirmed report has suggested his long-term girlfriend was pregnant, while an ex-girlfriend revealed that he vowed last year to do something memorable.

"One day I'm going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember," she quoted him as saying.

March 29, 2015

Fifteen years ago, Vladimir Putin was elected promising to make Russia strong again: a country its citizens could be proud of and that the world would respect.

This week, Russia's main polling agency measured his support rating at 85%.

While opinion polls do not tell the full story in a country where much of the media is under state control, Mr Putin's enduring popularity is undeniable.

"Russia and Putin go together, we just don't see another way," says Oleg Sokolov, a member of the latest pro-Putin youth group known as Set', or "Network".

Set' has its headquarters in a converted Moscow gas tower. The office resembles an internet start-up or a PR firm, strewn with bright-coloured bean bags and dotted with young Russians eating sushi or browsing their iPads.

But the brand they're promoting is Vladimir Putin: his image is plastered all over the walls alongside signs reminding Russians of what makes their country great.

'Not ashamed anymore'

The group won't comment on any formal links to the Kremlin but their passion for the cause is clearly genuine.

"Putin is a strong leader, I'd say the strongest in the world right now," Oleg says.

President Putin is plastered on the walls of the office of youth group Set'

He recalls Boris Yeltsin's rule following the Soviet collapse as a time of chaos and humiliation, not the dawn of democracy.

Though he barely reached his teens in the 1990s, the activist talks of "begging" the IMF for funds then and being forced to endure the drunken antics of Mr Putin's predecessor.

"With Yeltsin, I was ashamed that he ran my country. But with Putin, I'm not ashamed anymore."

Mr Putin was pictured taking part in a judo training session in December 2010

A former KGB spy, President Putin's image as a man of action has long been part of his appeal. It is carefully maintained through photo shoots: bare-chested on horseback, or tossing opponents onto a judo mat.

But his policy also resonates.

Last week, Russia marked a year since the annexation of Crimea. The move has been widely supported here, despite the heavy financial burden it brings - that was when Vladimir Putin's popularity rating topped 80% for the first time.

Loudly condemned in the West as illegal, in Russia the annexation is presented as reversing the "unjust" transfer of the peninsula to Soviet Ukraine in 1954.

Some also clearly revel in a post-Soviet Moscow starting to flex its political muscle.

March 30, 2015

South African comedian Trevor Noah is to replace Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, the New York Times reports. The 31-year-old made his debut as a contributor to the nightly satirical show last December. His first appearance took aim at racial tensions in the US, saying: "I never thought I'd be more afraid of police in America than in South Africa." Stewart announced he would be stepping down in January. He has hosted the influential comedy show for 16 years. The presenter has yet to set a timetable for his departure, but the selection of a replacement should make the task easier.

Producers will want to give Noah time to settle into this new role before next year's Presidential election. Speaking to the New York Times from Dubai, where he is on tour, the comedian expressed disbelief at his appointment. "You don't believe it for the first few hours," he said. "You need a stiff drink, and then unfortunately you're in a place where you can't really get alcohol."

"I'm thrilled for the show and for Trevor," said Stewart in a statement. "He's a tremendous comic and talent that we've loved working with." The star added he "may rejoin [The Daily Show] as a correspondent just to be a part of it!" Comedian Chris Rock, who had been touted as a possible replacement for Stewart,tweeted: "Thank you president Obama"

Noah is a relative unknown in the States, but has hosted numerous television shows - including his own late night talk show - in his native country.

It has garnered him an avid following on Twitter, where his two million followers will be aware of his ability to satirise the news without disengaging from the issues.

Media captionTrevor Noah appeared on BBC 2 panel show QI in 2013. One popular tweet, posted during Nelson Mandela's memorial service in 2013,read: "People shouldn't have booed Zuma at Mandela's memorial. But it's crazy that their anger supersedes their pain."

And after the 2012 Olympic Games, he quipped: "I'll miss the Olympics. It's the one time, when a group of black people can run, with no suspicion."

Noah was previously the subject of David Paul Meyer's award-winning film You Laugh But It's True, which documented his career in post-apartheid South Africa.

The comedian has also appeared on UK panel shows including QI and 8 Out Of 10 Cats, as well as performing on the BBC's Live From The Apollo programme.

He also performed at last year's Royal Variety Performance, where he spoke about his parents - a white Swiss man and a black Xhosa woman, whose relationship was illegal under apartheid laws.

His mother was fined and jailed by the South African government - Noah joked that he was "born a crime" - and he grew up in a Soweto township.

A TV career began when he landed a role on the soap opera Isidingo, aged 18, and he went on to host reality shows and radio programmes before becoming a stand-up.

"Trevor Noah is an enormous talent," said Michelle Ganeless, president of Comedy Central, which broadcasts the show. "He has an insightful and unique point of view, and most importantly, is wickedly funny.

January 26, 2015

Russia has purchased 70 new army jets and helicopters which will be stationed across the annexed Crimean peninsula over the course of the coming year. The move is part of a massive overhaul of the facilities in its Southern Military District, which stretches between the Caspian and the Black seas.

The new southern-based units consist of 50 fighter jets and 20 helicopters, some of which will come under the command of Russia’s air force, while others will join the air defence regiment of Russia’s historic Black Sea Fleet naval unit in Crimea. New additions will include Su-34 strike fighter jets, the amphibious Beriev Be-200 jet and Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, also known as ‘Havoc’.

Earlier this month Russia’s air force estimated 150 new units would be added to its ranks in 2015 across all four of its military districts, meaning that almost half of Russia’s military aviation reinforcements in the next year are to be stationed in the district surrounding Crimea.

Although it is territorially the smallest out of the country’s four military districts, Russia’s Southern Military District has becoming increasingly strategically important as it covers the disputed territories of Chechnya, borders the Russian-backed self-recognised independent republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and crucially also currently incorporates annexed Crimea. The district also had control over one of Russia’s largest and most controversial strongholds - its Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol, even when the city, as well as the rest of Crimea, was under Ukrainian control.

Shortly after Crimea’s impromptu decision to split from Ukraine and join Russia in the much-disputed referendum in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted Black Sea Fleet troops had “stood behind” pro-Russian militias fighting against Ukraine’s national forces on the peninsula prior to the referendum.

The recent deterioration of relations between the West and Russia over the Ukraine conflict has seen an increase in its troops based near the Black Sea. While the Southern Military District only had about 25 military aircraft in 2011, last year the Kremlin added 40 new aircrafts to the district’s ranks. This year the number of new units added has almost doubled.

Russia’s increased military strength around the Crimea is also mirrored by its naval strategy, which lists the Black Sea as one of the two major focal pointsfor Russian naval activity in the next fifteen years, alongside the Arctic. Russia’s Ministry of Defence also announced it will increase air force drills in the district by 30% in the coming year.

Despite the growing threat of recession in Russia, the Kremlin has increased the military’s budget to $26 billion for 2015 - an all time high in Russia’s post-Soviet history.

March 26, 2015

The Chechen parliament have threatened to send weapons to Mexico in retaliation to the U.S. Congress calling for defensive lethal aid to be sent to Ukraine. On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favour of sending arms - the resolution was passed 348 to 48.

U.S. senator for Wisconsin Ron Johnson branded it “absolutely necessary” that president Obama provide lethal and nonlethal military assistance to Ukraine, in light of the attacks by Russian-backed rebels on civilians in Mariupol in January.

In response, Chechnya's parliamentary speaker Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanovsaid that the U.S. has “no right” to advise Russia on how to behave with its neighbours.

He warned that the supply of arms to Ukraine will be perceived by Chechnya, a southern Russian republic, as a signal to deliver new weapons to Mexico to “resume debate on the legal status of the territories annexed by the U.S.”

Abdurakhmanov is referring to the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, which Mexico surrendered to the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, a peace deal which concluded the Mexican-American conflict. The U.S. paid Mexico $15 million and took on the $3.25 million debt owed by the Mexican government to American citizens in exchange for the territory.

In the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, the U.S. paid an additional $10 million to buy what is now New Mexico and Arizona.

Adurakhmanov said: “We reserve the right to conduct conferences in Russia, Mexico and the U.S. to raise the question of breaking away the above mentioned states from the U.S. and supplying weapons to resistance fighters there.”

On Tuesday, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, Alexey Pushkov, urged Obama to resist congressional pressure to arm Ukraine.

Pushkov told a Russian news agency that the U.S. Congress’ non-binding resolution sends “a strong signal of America’s long-term support in its policy of confrontation with Russia”.

Previous calls to arm Ukraine have been rejected by the Obama administration, who fear the move could instigate greater bloodshed between Ukrainian forces and the separatists. Earlier this month, the death toll from the conflict in eastern Ukraine passed 6,000, according the UN human rights office.

The crisis erupted in April 2014 following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation during the previous month.

March 25, 2015

When literate adults pick up a book, they don’t start sounding out each word letter by letter or sound by sound, the way their kindergarten or first-grade teacher probably told them to do when they were first beginning to read. Instead, as a new study shows, their brains recognize whole words they’ve seen before, which facilitates quicker reading. Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center’s Department of Neuroscience published their findings Tuesday in The Journal of Neuroscience. The paper, “Adding Words to the Brain’s Visual Dictionary: Novel Word Selectively Sharpens Orthographic Representations in the VWFA,” demonstrates the brain’s ability to adapt and learn to recognize new words. The brain can add new words to its “visual dictionary” even if they are made up and have no meaning attached to them, the researchers found. In their previous work, the researchers had shown that the area in the left side of the visual cortex—roughly behind the left ear—seemed to have a visual dictionary that recognized whole words as images. The visual word form area (VWFA), as it’s called, is opposite a similar brain area on the right side, called the fusiform face area (FFA), that quickly recognizes faces.

“One area is selective for a whole face, allowing us to quickly recognize people, and the other is selective for a whole word, which helps us read quickly,” Maximilian Riesenhuber, the paper’s senior author, says in a press release. In the current study, Riesenhuber and his colleagues delved deeper, asking whether this recognition of a familiar word in the visual dictionary was associated with meaning and whether new words could be added. The team began with 25 adult participants, but only a dozen were included in the study’s analysis. (Of the rest, some dropped out, in some the VWFA could not be identified, and others were excluded for other reasons.) Each participant had a brain scan using a kind of fMRI (or functional magnetic resonance imaging) technology called rapid adaptation, during which they were shown pairs of real words. In each pair, the two words were either exactly the same, different by only one letter or completely different. It turned out that the response level in the VWFA was the same whether the words were only one letter different or completely different, indicating that the neurons in the brain recognize the entire word at once rather than looking at its components.

Next, the researchers wanted to test if the brain would react to pseudo-words, or nonsense words, in the same way. During the first scan, the neurons showed no signs of recognizing these nonsense words. But then the researchers had the participants undergo training sessions to learn to recognize 150 pseudowords. They had to be able to remember and indicate that they’d seen these “words” before. When participants could pick out the fake words they’d learned from other nonsense words with a certain level of proficiency, the researchers did another scan. The second time around, response levels to the now-familiar pseudowords were the same as those for real familiar words. Lead author Laurie Glezer says that once you’re a skilled reader, you don’t need to process the sounds of each letter in a word anymore, and that is “what allows for fast, efficient reading that literate people are able to do.” Literate people can also learn visual representations of words without any semantic information. In other words, they respond to what the word itself looks like, even if they don’t know what it meas. Their brains could learn to recognize the pseudo-word soat just as they would the real word boat, if such people were trained to do so the way the participants in the study were.   The findings and future research could have implications for how we teach reading, particularly to those who struggle with traditional methods. “For people who cannot learn words by phonetically spelling them out—which is the usual method for teaching reading—learning the whole word as a visual object may be a good strategy,” Riesenhuber said in the press release.